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A.I. Artificial Intelligence
In the 22nd century, rising sea levels caused by global warming have wiped out coastal cities and altered the world's climate. With the human population in decline, advanced nations have created humanoid robots called mechas to fulfill various roles in society.
In Madison, New Jersey, David, an 11-year-old prototype mecha child capable of experiencing love, is given to Monica Swinton and her husband, Henry, whose son, Martin, is in suspended animation after contracting a rare disease. Initially uncomfortable with David, Monica eventually warms to him and activates his imprinting protocol. Touched by his love for her, she introduces him to Teddy, Martin's old robotic teddy bear, and the two become friends.
After Martin is unexpectedly cured of his disease and brought home, he jealously goads David into cutting off a piece of Monica's hair. That night, David enters his adoptive parents' room, but as Monica turns over, the scissors accidentally poke her in the eye. While Henry attends to her wounds, Teddy picks up the lock of hair from the floor and places it in his pocket. During a pool party, one of Martin's friends pokes David with a knife, triggering his self-protection programming. David grabs Martin, causing both of them to fall into the pool. While Martin is rescued, David is accused of endangering others.
Frightful of David's reactions and fearing for his family's safety, Henry convinces Monica to return David to his creators for destruction. En route, she instead spares David by abandoning him in a forest full of scrap metal and obsolete mechas, telling him to avoid people and find solace with his own kind. Now accompanied solely by Teddy, David recalls The Adventures of Pinocchio and decides to find the Blue Fairy in the hope that she will make him a "real boy" (and therefore worthy of Monica's love).
David and Teddy are captured by the "Flesh Fair", a kind of traveling circus, in which obsolete mechas are destroyed in front of jeering crowds. About to be destroyed himself, David pleads for his life. The audience revolts, allowing David to escape with Gigolo Joe, a prostitute mecha on the run after being framed for murder. David, Teddy, and Joe go to the decadent resort town of Rouge City, where "Dr. Know", a holographic answer engine, directs them to the top of Rockefeller Center in the flooded ruins of New York City.
Above the ruins of New York, David meets Professor Hobby, his creator, who tells him that their meeting demonstrates David's ability to love and desire, as well as to pursue his dreams, like a human. David finds copies of himself, including female variants called "Darlene", ready to be shipped. Disheartened by his lost sense of individuality, David attempts suicide by falling from a skyscraper into the ocean. While underwater, he notices a figure resembling the Blue Fairy, before Joe rescues him in an amphibious aircraft. Before David can explain, authorities capture Joe with an electromagnet. David and Teddy take control of the aircraft to see the Blue Fairy, which turns out to be a statue from an attraction on Coney Island. The two become trapped when the Wonder Wheel falls on their vehicle. Believing that the Blue Fairy is real, David repeatedly asks the statue to turn him into a real boy until his power source is depleted.
Two thousand years later, humanity is extinct and Manhattan is buried under glacial ice. Mechas have evolved into an advanced form, and a group known as the Specialists, interested in humanity, find and resurrect David and Teddy. They reconstruct the Swinton family home from David's memories before explaining, via an interactive version of the Blue Fairy, that he cannot become human. However, they recreate Monica through genetic material from the strand of hair that Teddy kept. This version of Monica can live for only one day and cannot be revived. David spends his happiest day with Monica, and as she falls asleep in the evening, Monica tells David that she has always loved him. David lies down next to her and closes his eyes as Teddy watches over them.