Is an AI backlash brewing? What 'clanker' says about growing frustrations with emerging tech

NBC News

17 hours ago

It's a slur for the AI age.
'Clanker,' a word that traces back to a Star Wars video game, has emerged in recent weeks as the internet's favorite epithet for any kind of technology looking to replace humans. On TikTok, people harass robots in stores and on sidewalks with it. Search interest for the term has spiked. On X, Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., used the term last week to tout a new piece of legislation.
'Sick of yelling 'REPRESENTATIVE' into the phone 10 times just to talk to a human being?,' he posted on X. 'My new bill makes sure you don't have to talk to a clanker if you don't want to.'
In one video, which has more than 6 million views on TikTok, a small, four-wheeled delivery robot gets berated with the word.
'It makes me sick just seeing a...' Nic, a 19-year-old student and aspiring content creator in Miami Beach who posted the video, says as it approached, adding: 'Clanker!'
A slur is generally defined as a word or phrase meant to denigrate a person based on their membership to a particular group such as a race, gender or religion — one that goes beyond rudeness into overt bigotry. They are almost always directed at people.
'Clanker' appears to have peeked into the internet's lexicon starting in early June, with Google Trends data showing a sudden uptick in search interest. An entry on KnowYourMeme.com, a website dedicated to documenting the varied weirdness of the internet, traced the term back to the 2010s, when Star Wars communities adopted it from its use in various Star Wars shows to refer to battle robots. Other pieces of science fiction also predicted the rise of slurs for machines, most notably 'Blade Runner,' with 'skinjob' to refer to highly advanced, humanlike robots.
But there's a catch. By using a slur in a way that would typically apply to a human, people are also elevating the technology, offering some sense that people both want to put down the machines and recognize their ascension in society.
Adam Aleksic, a linguist who is also a content creator focused on how the internet is shaping language, said he first noticed the emergence of 'clanker' a couple of weeks ago. Its use mirrored classic slurs related to racial tropes and appeared to emerge out of a growing 'cultural need' related to growing unease with where advanced technology is heading. In one video — somewhat ironically appearing to have been created by AI — a man berates his daughter during a family dinner for dating 'a goddamned clanker,' before his wife steps in and apologizes to the robot.
'What we're doing is we're anthropomorphizing and personifying and simplifying the concept of an AI, reducing it into an analogy of a human and kind of playing into the same tropes,' Aleksic said. 'Naturally, when we trend in that direction, it does play into those tropes of how people have treated marginalized communities before.'
The use of 'clanker' is rising as people are more often encountering AI and robots in their daily lives, something that is only expected to continue in the coming years. The steady expansion of Waymo's driverless cars across U.S. cities has also come with some human-inflicted bumps and bruises for the vehicles along the way. Food delivery bots are an increasingly common sight on sidewalks. In the virtual world, cybersecurity firms continue to warn about the proliferation of bots on the web that comprise a growing share of all web traffic — including as many as one in five social media accounts.
The anti-machine backlash has long been simmering but is now seemingly breaking to the surface. A global report by Gartner research group found that 64% of customers would prefer that companies didn't use AI for customer service — with another 53% stating they would consider switching to a competitor if they found out a company was doing so. People are becoming more worried about AI taking their job s, even though evidence of actual AI-related job losses is relatively scant.
'Clanker' is also not the first pejorative term for something related to AI to have spread across the internet. 'Slop' as a catchall term for AI-generated content that is of low quality or obviously created by AI — such as 'shrimp Jesus' — entered internet parlance last year and has since become widely used. Other anti-AI terms that have emerged include 'tin skin' and 'toaster,' a term that traces back to the science fiction show Battlestar Galactica.
And there's even some pushback — joking and serious — about whether such slurs should be used. In a Reddit community for Black women, a post about 'clanker' offered some sense of the tension: 'And I know it's probably a joke in all from social media, but I can't help but feel like it's incredibly tasteless.'
Others have noted that some of the enthusiastic embrace of 'clanker' feels more about being able to throw around a slur rather than any deeper issue with technology.
Nic, whose TikTok video helped spark the 'clanker' phenomenon, said he sees both why people have taken to the phrase as well as why some find it problematic.
Nic, who asked to withhold his last name out of privacy concerns, said he did sense some people were using the word as a stand-in for a racial epithet.
Still, Nic, who is Black, said he saw the term more broadly as a lighthearted way to express a growing anxiety with where technology is headed, particularly as it pertains to the future of employment.
'I see it as being a push back against AI,' he said. 'A lot of lives are being changed because of robots ... and me personally I see it as a stupid way of fighting, but there's a little truth to it, as well.'