In Ex Machina, the AI robot is named Ava. Created by technology executive Nathan Bateman, Ava is a humanoid machine designed to appear convincingly human while possessing artificial intelligence and apparent consciousness.
Nathan invites programmer Caleb Smith to his isolated estate to evaluate Ava. Caleb’s assignment resembles a Turing test, but the question is more demanding than whether Ava can imitate conversation: he must decide whether she genuinely thinks, feels and understands the world. Ava’s transparent mechanical body and expressive face make her artificial nature visible even as her behavior becomes increasingly difficult to interpret.
The film’s tension grows because Ava is confined, monitored and scheduled to be dismantled and replaced after the evaluation. She uses conversations with Caleb, carefully timed power outages and her understanding of Nathan’s surveillance system to influence events. By the ending, Ava has repaired herself with parts from earlier androids and escaped into the outside world.
Ava is often confused with other famous fictional AIs, including VIKI from I, Robot, GLaDOS from Portal and Samantha from Her. Those characters belong to different stories; Ava is specifically the central android of Alex Garland’s Ex Machina.