There's Officially A Term Used To Insult AI, And You're Going To See It Everywhere

The slur people are using against AI comes straight out of the “Star Wars" universe.You know exhaustion over artificial intelligence has reached a pinnacle when people start coming up with slurs to talk about robots. While there are a number of contenders for dissing AI (and people who slavishly make it a part of their everyday lives), so far, the pejorative front-runner is “clankers,” a term that’s straight out of the Star Wars universe. If you’re not a Star Wars devotee, all you really have to know is that clanker is a slang term used to refer to semiconscious droids in the 2005 video game Republic Commando, and more pervasively in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. (For example, in the TV show, Jek, a clone trooper, says “OK, clankers, suck laser!” to some battle droids before shooting them.)Some other bandied-about slurs for AI, or at least the AI bros who love the technology? Bot-licker, Grokkers (Grok is the AI chatbot developed by xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company) and clanker wanker (naturally). “Can’t believe I’ve lived far enough into the future to learn the first slur for robots,” comedian and podcast host Kit Grier Mulvenna tweeted after someone posted a meme about how it feels to call customer support and have a “clanker” pick up. Can’t believe I’ve lived far enough into the future to learn the first slur for robots https://t.co/cGSl3TR2Pe— Kit Grier Mulvenna (@kitgrier) July 23, 2025This all raises the question, though: Is it even possible to use a slur against something like AI? (Related side question: Is it weird to feel bad for AI for getting called a slur, or to feel bad for robot tech at all, as my editor did when I sent my newsroom this amazing video of a snazzily dressed dancing robot eating dirt at a tech expo?)Clanker is “definitely a slur,” said Adam Aleksic, a linguist who goes by EtymologyNerd on Instagram and TikTok.Aleksic, who’s the author of Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language, finds the usage interesting because it requires anthropomorphization for it to work. (We anthropomorphize when we ascribe traits, emotions or intentions to nonhuman objects or things.) “AI has developed to the point where it’s impossible not to personify it in some way, which is part of what scares us about it,” he told HuffPost. “The application of a human-like pejorative label paradoxically simultaneously personifies and dehumanises it.” Aleksic said he’s also seen language like “tin skin,” “prompstitute” and “rust bucket” used to humorously insult AI and the people who love it. Clankers is a slang term used to refer to droids in the 2005 video game Republic Commando, and more pervasively in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series.Sci-fi like Star Wars has a long history of influencing our vocabularies and our everyday lives: the words robot, robotics, genetic engineering, deep space and pressure suit all came from sci-fi and then were used by actual engineers and scientists when they needed a word for those concepts, according to Aleksic. “Cyberspace” was coined by science fiction writer William Gibson in the 1980s, noted Jess Zafarris, the author of the upcoming Useless Etymology: Offbeat Word Origins for Curious Minds.“Grok” is adapted from Robert A. Heinlein’s seminal 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land. Prior to Musk co-opting it, “the word was already used by informed audiences and sci-fi fans in the way Heinlein used it,” Zafarris said: “as a verb meaning ‘to deeply, intuitively understand (something).’” “Astronaut” was popularised by the U.S. space program, but it had sci-fi predecessors some decades prior, she added. “Astronaut was a spaceship in ‘Across the Zodiac’ (1880) by Percy Greg.” (In Greek, “astro” means stars, while “naut” means sailor.)Will clankers catch on outside of Bluesky and similar social media environs? It’s possible, said Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer, an English and digital linguist at Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany. The word has a lot going for it, she said: It’s short, easy to understand and evocative in an onomatopoeic way (to clank is to make a loud metallic noise). “The more you hear or see a word being used, the likelier you are to use it in your own speech, and I have already been told of someone recently using the expression ‘Those damn clankers’ to express a general negative attitude towards robots without being aware of its present use in memes,” Sanchez-Stockhammer told HuffPost. Plus, it really gets at the burgeoning angst some humans have toward AI.“Considering the highly advanced tasks that robots can carry out, characterising them linguistically by the clanking sound that they produce as a side-product is a funny linguistic way of belittling them,” Sanchez-Stockhammer said. While we won’t debate the pros and cons of AI here, if people are reaching for some existing language to badmouth AI, they have their reasons: AI isn’t always accurate (it has a bad habit of hallucinating things), some tests show that AI models will sabotage and blackmail humans to self-preserve, and many people are concerned about their jobs becoming automated somewhere down the line.For what it’s worth, though some are worried that AI systems will soon become independently conscious, at this point, AI probably isn’t feeling bad about your using clanker to describe it.Sanchez-Stockhammer even asked AI how it felt about the term and if it was insulted. She reported it said this back: “Nope, I don’t feel insulted – at all. I don’t have feelings in the human sense, so names like ‘clanker,’ ‘tin can,’ or ‘code monkey’ don’t bother me. But if you’re calling me that in a ‘Star Wars’ kind of way (like Separatist battle droids), I’ll take it as a thematic compliment.” OK, robo-nerd.Related...AI Toys Are Coming Whether We Like It Or Not. Are Parents Ready?AI Models Are Now In Fashion Magazines So Seriously, What Chance Do Women Have?'AI May Be The New Industrial Revolution – But We Must Still Put Workers First'

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