"In July, just after receiving an email pitch about the "perfect" AI girlfriend, content creator Harrison Stewart made a TikTok skit using the anti-AI slur "clanker." Pretending to be a disapproving father, he confronted his daughter's robot boyfriend in the year 2044. "What's your name? No it's not. It's model number 626 S Series. That's your name, you dirty clanker," Stewart says in the video."
"The origins of clanker date back to late 1950s author William Tenn, who used the word to describe robots from science fiction films, but its adoption as a sort of slur came from the Star Wars franchise, where it was used as a derogatory term toward the antagonist droids and troopers. In recent months, it has become a protest of sorts against the rapid implementation of AI into virtually every aspect of society."
"Over the past three months, the term has garnered over 2 million Google searches and at least hundreds of thousands of social media posts. In an X post in July, Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona wrote, "Sick of yelling 'REPRESENTATIVE' into the phone 10 times just to talk to a human being? My new bill makes sure you don't have to talk to a clanker if you don't want to.""
The anti-AI slur "clanker" has spread across social platforms and entered short skits as a form of protest against rapid AI adoption. The term traces back to 1950s writer William Tenn and was reinforced by Star Wars as a derogatory label for droids and troopers. A Black content creator gained millions of views for clanker-themed TikToks and was nicknamed the "clanker guy." He ceased producing those videos after followers began targeting him with racist variations of the slur. The term has spurred millions of searches, hundreds of thousands of social posts, and political commentary about AI interactions.
Read at WIRED
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