The ‘Star Wars’ Slur That Has Been Mainstreamed by Anti-AI Discourse

“Clanker.” You’ve most likely heard the time period on-line lots recently, as growing wariness of the acceptance of generative AI has led to an virtually science-fictional world of anti-robot sentiment. It’s grow to be an more and more widespread derogatory time period, rising past the constraints of referring to chatbots and picture mills to consult with any form of non-human robotic intelligence. It’s maybe becoming then, because it penetrates more and more mainstream social circles, that “Clanker” itself is rooted in science fiction—and, specifically, a world the place the connection between natural and artificial life has lengthy been difficult.

That world is, in fact, Star Wars. “Clanker” is a time period as previous because the prequel period itself: it first seems in Star Wars media within the 2005 online game Republic Commando—a tie-in set across the occasions of the Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith that might go on to encourage its own (occasionally controversial) legacy throughout each the then-expanded universe and finally up to date Star Wars continuity. There, it’s a derogatory comment typically utilized by one of many recreation’s titular commandos in Delta Squad, Sev, who would sometimes consult with droid opponents mid-combat as “awful clankers.”

The time period rose to additional reputation in Star Wars a number of years later with the launch of the Clone Wars 3DCG animated collection in 2008. There, very like it was in Republic Commando, “Clanker” turned a commonplace time period utilized by Republic troopers to consult with the droid forces of the Separatist armies—and defined by Obi-Wan Kenobi himself through the season two episode “Voyage of Temptation” as shorthand describing the mechanical clanking sound made by battle droids.

Since then, the time period has taken off in each Star Wars itself and in Star Wars fandom circles. Whereas the penetration of “Clanker” itself unfold to being a derogatory time period for any form of droid, Separatist or in any other case (it’s even been retroactively established as being in existence as early because the period of the Excessive Republic, two centuries earlier than the occasions of the movies), inside fandom, the time period has largely been fodder for memes and jokes, paralleling the time period’s proximity to real-world slurs.

It’s solely been in the summertime of 2025 that “clanker” has entered mainstream viral developments. Rising on platforms like TikTok, the time period advanced from Star Wars-specific memes and jokes to grow to be the topic of a number of viral movies the place the time period is used to consult with extra standard modern-day robots, from meals supply to automated name heart operatives—after which, making the leap from there to point disdain for generative AI platforms like ChatGPT and Midjourney. Search for the term now and also you’ll discover a number of viral posts utilizing “clanker” derogatorily or remarking on its standing as an virtually dystopic evolution of language, or, in fact, Star Wars followers making an attempt to remind you that that they had it first.

However it’s maybe becoming that, whatever the variety of sci-fi franchises about robot-ruled dystopias, it was Star Wars that gave us a mainstreamed slur for synthetic intelligences. From the very starting of the collection, C-3PO and R2-D2 had been offered into indentured servitude; we see Wuher, the Mos Eisley Cantina bartender, snarling, “We don’t serve their sort“—artificial life has all the time been treated as second-class within the galaxy far, far-off. It will take years for expanded materials to attempt to justify the horrors of what posing the straightforward query “Are droids people?” even raised, and it’s taken longer nonetheless for Star Wars to even actually grapple with the concept of what it means to deal with a droid as any type of sentient life.

And but, right here we’re with “Clanker.” Star Wars has nonetheless but to make any form of profound leap with the rights of droids in its storytelling. Some choose few are given equitable personhood, like Artoo and Threepio, however in any other case droids exist to be enslaved in some form or another, fodder that perpetually avoids the query of what it means to dwell a lifetime of indentured existence, humanoid types which might be handled inhumanely. After all, in our world, synthetic intelligence is way from the extent of droid sentience seen in Star Wars, it doesn’t matter what any Silicon Valley tech bro tells you once they laud the arrival of generative AI as, to borrow parlance from one other sci-fi franchise, futile to withstand.

However in an age of skepticism over even the minor roles such intelligence can play in our trendy lives, perhaps it’s solely honest we flip to one of the crucial mainstream fictional universes to depict widespread anti-robot sentiment to seek out the instruments to speak our personal disdain… even when these instruments have some fairly questionable roots.

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