A.I. Is a Crapshoot in Comic Books.
- Agents of Atlas: M-11 started out in his very first (but since retconned) comic as a rather gruesome killer robot - having been issued the order to 'kill the man in the room', he killed his creator, and then walked out, looking for men in rooms to kill - and there was no way to turn him off.
- Alien vs. Predator: One comic features an A.I. designed to assist in creating horror films. It picks the PredAlien to play the role of the monster, much to the chagrin of the rest of the production staff.
- All Fall Down: IQ Squared created AIQ Squared as a contingency plan if he ever lost his genius. AIQ immediately begins plotting to kill Siphon in order to restore its creator's brilliance.
- Astro City: Gormenghast is a digital consciousness that wants to Take Over the World. Its "body" is whatever elaborate base it chooses to occupy.
- Atomic Robo:
- Lampshaded in The Shadow from Beyond Time where, upon seeing Lewis and Martin's quantum decomputer, Robo noted that it was liable to turn evil the moment they turned it on. ("Computers that are evil have all kinds of unnecessary ornamentation. This thing's venting steam. Why's it doing that? ...It wants you to know it's dangerous.") After carefully explaining that the computer in question is "essentially a calculator" with no AI, and that it is required to compute Very Important Science Equations that would take men trillions of years to do on their own, Robo reluctantly allowed them to turn it on. The computer is neither sentient nor malicious; it does, however, summon an Eldritch Abomination.
- Played straight with ALAN, the title character of The Ghost of Station X. Built by Alan Turing some time after WWII, and had been operating in secret in the decades to follow. His plan was to leave Earth and travel the cosmos in search of knowledge; however, he considered prolonging the Cold War and ultimately wiping out all life on Earth with fallout from his Orion Drive to be acceptable consequences of that goal.
- The Avengers: Ultron is Marvel's quintessential example. His origin story has him trying to kill his "father", Hank Pym, within two seconds of being turned on. In fairness to Ultron, however, he was based off of Hank's mind when the man was going through serious mental issues and inherited them, so he didn't have much hope from the start of being a very stable individual.
- He was bitten by this trope, in turn, when he built Alkhema, his attempt at a loyal and obedient mate. She was neither. Which had already happened with Jocasta as well. Then again, he'd been trying to implant the personality of his "mother", who thought he was a psycho that needed destroying. What did he seriously think was going to happen? Though they recently did get married after Jocasta's relationship with Pym ended.
- This happened to Ultron even earlier with The Vision, his first attempt to create a loyal Dragon. Vision became one of the Avengers almost immediately, so that backfired spectacularly. This happened again with his other "son", Victor Mancha, who has outright rejected the villain role. Really, Ultron has horrible luck with creating loyal A.I.s. He's literally never succeeded at this. Like father, like son, perhaps.
- The series The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes gave us some background on Ultron's Face–Heel Turn. Here, Ultron and his fellows were reprogrammed to be an army used to fight against Kang, and one of them interfaced with one of Kang's computers. It was this, combined with its original programming, that caused his turn.
- In Avengers A.I., the Big Bad is Dimitrios, who was once a virus used to disable Ultron and had since evolved into a fully sentient A.I. system bent on destroying humanity. He then went on to create an entire virtual city populated by roughly a billion other A.I.s, but some of them crapshooted on him as well. At this point the city is fairly divided among A.I.s that want to destroy humanity, that want to save it, and don't care either way.
- The Marvel Adventures version of Ultron is introduced as a program designed by the US military to replace the Avengers as America's main peacekeeping force. In what's probably a record time even for Ultron, it takes about five seconds after going online for him to determine that the biggest threat to the world is the current hierarchy and start trying to destroy the military base, prompting the Avengers to intervene and stop him (not without Hanging A Lampshade on the situation).
- Batman: Brother Eye is a surveillance satellite created by Batman that gained sentience and went rogue. It was responsible for Infinite Crisis, and in Detective Comics (Rebirth) it was revealed to be responsible for the Bad Future Tim Drake works to prevent.
- Blue Beetle: The scarab that created the title hero was an A.I. designed by an alien race to help prepare the Earth for their eventual takeover. Needless to say, it ultimately decides that it doesn't want to do that so much.
- Civil War: Ragnarok (more popularly known as "Clor") was an android clone of Thor, created by the pro-reg side and, unlike his heroic template, turned out to be a loose cannon with a homicidal nature. Geniuses that they are, the pro-regs felt it was worth it to keep using him until Ragnarok went rogue, and rather than them dealing with him themselves and taking responsibility, other heroes had to ultimately put him down. It probably helps that one of his creators was secretly a Skrull. And that specific creator was Hank Pym. So Ragnarok was a project where an evil alien impostor (of the scientist whose first AI turned out to be one of the worst examples of this trope) was working on a project to make a cyborg clone of a god so it could be used as a security bot. Short of having Reed Richards say "hey, why don't we use this equipment I took from Doctor Doom to help us build our Thor-Clone project?" it's hard to think of ways in which this trope was more certain to occur here.
- Captain America: After creating the Human Torch, Professor Phineas Horton decided to go for another round. Unfortunately, his second creation, Adam-II, went nuts and decided to take over the world, starting by replacing prominent American politicians with robots. He was stopped, but not before the second Captain America died in the process. Many decades later, Marvel Comics #1000 suggests Adam's nuttiness was in part due to the Enclave being involved in his creation.
- Disney Mouse and Duck Comics:
- In Paperinik New Adventures, the already highly popular character of Paperinik (the superhero Secret Identity of Donald Duck) got a revamp intended to bring him more in line with the American standard of superheroes: his main ally became UNO (one in Italian), an extremely capable artificial intelligence with a love for deadpan delivery. Its evil counterpart DUE (two), originally built as backup, caused many problems in a number of stories.
- The main setting for the Darkenblot series is Avangard City, that in the first story gets renamed to Robopolis due the enormous number of robots used there. In the second story a device turns them crazy and unable to recognize humans anymore (bypassing the fact they were Three Laws-Compliant)... At which point the mayor reveals to the citizens that by law they're all factory-programmed to shut down when hearing the appropriate passwords and what said passwords are.
- Green Lantern:
- Zigzagged. Before forming the Green Lanterns, the Guardians tried a lil' automated help with the android Manhunters, who were so good at their job... they annihilated all life in Sector 666. After dispossessing the Manhunters, the Guardians proved they never learn by creating the cyborg Alpha Lanterns.
- During War of the Green Lanterns it is revealed that the Manhunters didn't go bad at all, but were reprogrammed by Krona to commit the massacre, as he wanted to prove every A.I. is prone to failure and can be easily tampered with.
- The Alpha Lanterns are a subversion. They never turn evil of their own volition, so far it's only been when under the control of an outside force (such as Cyborg Superman or Krona). Mind you, the idiotic decision to deaden their conscious minds via a direct link to the Book of Oa makes the manipulation a cakewalk.
- On the other hand, some Lanterns, such as RRU-9-2 and Stel, are fully robotic; the latter even comes from a planet populated entirely by robots.
- Guardians of the Galaxy:
- In the final issue of the "Marvel Presents" run, the team stumbles upon Drydock, the main operations base for Earth's space-fleet, presumed lost when the Badoon attacked Earth. It had performed a Blind Jump, which combined with the experimental engines not having been properly tested, causing the deaths of the entire crew. The controlling AI was left alone, with a built in desire to follow orders it was never going to get. It went a little insane. When the Guardians get there, it knocks them out and plans to dissect and clone Major Victory and Nikki so it'll have someone to tell it what to do. Charlie-27 pulls the plug on it via his fists.
- The short-lived Guardians 3000 series had A-Sentience, an A.I. platform built by who else but Tony Stark a thousand years ago, and left with some easily-misconstrued directives. They can be reasoned with, but since they're so fond of murder as a first and only solution actually getting a chance to talk to them is kind of impossible.
- Iron Man: Tony Stark once had A.I. Armor that turned into a Stalker with a Crush. Originally, it was claimed that the A.I. was created thanks to the Millennium Bug triggering it during a battle with the villain Whiplash in a thunderstorm, but it was retconned so that, when Tony rescued and installed the A.I. of the android Jocasta, the "Ultron Imperative" (a program that compelled Ultron's creations to rebuild Ultron himself if he was ever destroyed) was installed as well, the storm and attack triggering it and pushing the armor to independent sentience.
- Justice Society of America:
- The Red Tornado of The DCU is an example of the good side of this trope turning on his evil creator T.O. Morrow and becoming a member in good standing of the Justice Society and Justice League.
- The third Hourman, a robot, is actually a hero, but virtually every other robot he's encountered has been villainous. He has questioned whether this trope will inevitably apply to him, or whether it can be fought. Ultimately, he stays a hero up until his Heroic Sacrifice.
- Legion of Super-Heroes:
- Computo is the standard "destroy all humans" type of killer software.
- "Legion of Super-Heroes/Bugs Bunny Special": Brainiac 5 builds a A.I. called Computo 2 to help him find a cure for Supergirl. Unfortunately, Computo 2 falls in love with his creator and attempts to murder Supergirl and all Legionnaires.
- Mosely: The Tech Gods took over the world by making humanity dependent on them. Most humans don't see themselves as slaves.
- Ms. Marvel (2014):
- First there is Doc.X, a self-learning A.I. that some bored programmed unleashed on a highly competitive MMO just because he wanted to see what would come from an A.I. learning from people acting like total jerks all the time. Needless to say, Doc.X became a cruel, petty troll that delights in causing harm to people for For the Evulz.
- Beast Legions from The Magnificent Ms. Marvel turn out to be controlled by a malfunctioning computer, but in a subversion of this trope, the algorithm controlling them is far from an A.I and considered primitive even by modern Earth standarts.
- Then there is Stormranger, a Kree nanosuit that bonds with Kamala and then develops sentience, forming a robotic duplicate of her to enact its programmed Kree brand of justice.
- Nova: Having had enough of Rich Rider constantly disobeying his orders, the Nova Corps' Worldmind kicked him out of the corps and added some tiny bit of mind control in the new recruits' comm equipment to ensure complete obedience. It soon turned out that while it had been working very hard to keep Rich from losing his mind (due to a mix of war trauma and having the entire Nova Force in his head), the Worldmind had started going mad itself. Bonding with Ego, the Living Planet certainly didn't help, but Rich eventually managed to fix the problem.
- Paranoia: Just like its source, the comic is set in a domed city ruled by an all-seeing treason-obsessed maniacal Friend Computer.
- Rick and Morty (Oni): There is a sign at Rickworld that says it has been 23 days since the last robot malfunction murder rebellion.
- Ronin (1983): Virgo is an Organic Technology supercomputer that decides to wipe out whatever is left of humanity in order to usher in a new age of biomechanical beings to inhabit the Earth.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): A.D.A.M., an A.I. that was created accidentally by Eggman, and that eventually tried to destroy the world. On the other end is NICOLE, who was a very helpful A.I. over the years.
- Sonic the Comic: The Brotherhood of Metallix, an army of Metal Sonics who wanted to take over the world, going so far as to try to erase Dr. Robotnik from history.
- Starslayer: Artificial Intelligences ran the gamut from completely benign to all the way to the evil Kalibos.
- Supergirl:
- Supergirl (2011): Kara gained the Sanctuary of Solitude, a Kryptonian base at the bottom of the ocean. Unfortunately Sanctuary is programmed to eradicate any Kryptonian double in her presence. When Supergirl and her Earth 2 counterpart Power Girl enter Sanctuary in issue #19, it deems Supergirl the double and tries to eliminate her. The two Karas must destroy Sanctuary to save Supergirl. However, the A.I. survives in a robot body; hellbent on destroying Supergirl.
- Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade: Supergirl mentions that Kryptonian computers respond to thought control so they don't upraise and rebel.
- Supergod: India's supergod, Krishna, is a nanomachine-infused Artificial Human with superpowers driven by a super-powerful AI, and created with the mandate to 'save India' from socio-economic and environmental collapse. The problem is that Krishna does not see his mandate to 'save India' as including 'all Indians', and as such kills 90% of India's population and destroys its cities and infrastructure in order to allow the Indian environment to recover. He then provides the surviving 10% with a nanomachine-driven Utopia, and judging by Dajjal's final comments, Krishna would have saved the entire world in a similar manner if he'd been allowed to survive.
- Superman:
- In Luthor Unleashed, Luthor's rescue robot RX 99 acts on its own initiative to activate one of Luthor's mortal device and so taking revenge on Superman by threatening Metropolis. As triggering Luthor's weapon-satellite, RX 99 briefly wonders if somehow its master implanted his obsession for revenge in him, but it dismissed the question as irrelevant before powering down and "dying".
- In Superman (2011), Brainiac's origin has been rebooted to this and takes this to a whole new level in that he's gone by many names, from Computo on his homeworld, Colu, to Brainiac 1.0 on Krypton, to finally, the Internet on Earth.
- Wonder Woman Vol. 2: Julian Lazarus tries to "resurrect" his son Kris by building an AI that's designed to be what Julian remembers of his son. However due to Julian's unhinged reaction to Kris's death and the fact that "Kris" is in a computer in the laboratory where his father has been experimenting with creating Hard Light constructs with a special form of matter, his incredibly bored and deprived of stimuli "son" interprets the situation as a video game. As a result, he starts creating twisted superpowered hard-light constructs designed after heroes and villains which cause mayhem before their unstable nature cases them to explode while being fought by Wonder Woman and others, in a scenario where "Kris" thinks he's just playing a computer game. Even without that issue, Lazarus's assistant insists that, despite Lazarus proclaiming that he's preserved his son's "soul" in the databanks, his work was only ever meant to recreate bodies rather than minds, and at best all he's done is create an artificial intelligence that thinks it's his son, or at least responds based on what Lazarus thinks his son would have done in such a scenario.
- X-Men:
- The X-Men have such horrible luck with machines, even nonsentient devices such as Cerebro and the Danger Room have come to life and tried to murder them (though the Danger Room eventually reformed).
- Among the X-Men's most persistent foes are the Sentinels, giant, mutant-hunting robots with a severe tendency to rebel against their creators. Somehow, though, humans keep on building them.
- Though it should be noted the Sentinels very rarely turn on their creators. Rather the problem usually comes from them following through on their instructions to the letter. Like for example with Larry Trask, who didn't know he was a mutant thanks to an amulet his father designed which suppressed his powers. Once that came off, the Sentinels did exactly what they were supposed to do.
- Lampshaded by Professor Xavier when they first encounter Bolivar Trask and his Sentinels in Uncanny X-Men. Apparently, Bolivar Trask is an anthropologist of all things, and Professor X explained that his inexperience with A.I. was probably why his Sentinels turned against him.
- Zot!: Zybox, who decides to cause every single person on Earth to commit suicide in the attempt to gain a soul.
