10. The wives in The Stepford Wives (1975)

A group of suburban husbands build robot wives with no purpose or personality outside of cooking, cleaning, and having sex with them in The Stepford Wives. They do this simply “because they can,” making their lives easier by having someone worship the ground they walk on and never letting them lift a finger. These submissive automatons would do anything for their masters—not just play Susie Homemaker, but even calmly murder their human counterparts to take their place.

In the 1970s, The Stepford Wives embodied the anxieties surrounding the rise of second-wave feminism, and today, with the resurgence of the “trad wife” movement on TikTok, it feels ominous. It’s a cautionary tale about what could happen when misogynists use AI to enforce sexist, limiting gender roles. Many men secretly want women to be obedient objects, and we shouldn’t be building the tools to make that happen.