The Top 12 AI Documentaries In 2025

Are you looking to uncover the dark side of artificial intelligence (AI), minus the Hollywood lasers and with way more real-world consequences?

In this blog, we're counting down the top 12 AI documentaries that everyone will be talking about in 2025.

These aren’t your typical sci-fi thrillers. These are documentaries that peel back the curtain on how artificial intelligence is already shaping everything from our social lives and justice systems to global warfare and the pursuit of immortality.

Let's dive in... before the algorithm notices.

Jump To The #1 AI Documentary To Watch In 2025

#12. Hi, AI (2019)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 6.3 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: Not Available (Critics), Not Available (Audience)

What's This Documentary About?

Kicking things off is a personal favorite of mine.

Hi, AI is a quirky doc that takes you on a strange and fascinating road trip with humanoid robots. Literally.

We follow a lonely German man who "dates" his new robot companion and takes his robotic girlfriend on a road trip and a Japanese android that’s trying to hold polite conversations with real people.

Hi, AI captures what happens when machines are introduced into human relationships, across different cultures and everyday lives.

Why It's Awesome

This documentary is a must-watch because it's not your typical doomsday scenarios or tech jargon.

Instead, it quietly explores what happens when artificial companions try to fill human-shaped holes.

Hi, AI is deeply human, funny and at times, heartbreaking. Not because the robots are scary, but more because the people around them are lonely.

It’s awkward, charming, and just unsettling enough to remind you that emotional intelligence and silicon don’t always mix.

#11. Do You Trust This Computer? (2018)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 7.3 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 69% (Critics), 85% (Audience)

What's This Documentary About?

Think you're in control of your tech?

This documentary is here to ruin that illusion. It looks you dead in the eye and asks "Hey, what if AI doesn't just change the world... what if it runs it?"

Then it shows you why that's not just a late-night Reddit thread.

Do You Trust This Computer? explores how AI is no longer a sci-fi, but a sci-fact, and how it's being woven into every inch of modern life. From military drones and political mind games to self-driving cars and AI that might beat your doctor to a diagnosis. It's all in here.

There's interviews with top-tier experts, scientist, and even a few tech-world prophets (including Elon Musk, doing his usual "we're all doomed" thing).

It paints a picture of a future where AI isn't just a tool, but a decision-maker.

Why It's Awesome

What's awesome about this doc is that it pulls no punches. It asks the big questions.

What happens when machines become smarter than us? Who controls the algorithms that control us? Do we really know what we're building?

It's visually sharp, well-produced and just uncomfortable enough to make you cover your webcam. It's not fearmongering. It's forecasting.

And by the end, you'll either want to read every AI safety paper ever written, or go completely off-grid.

Either way, it earns a firm place on the list.

Because if the title alone made you pause, then you're already asking the right questions.

#10. We Need To Talk About AI (2020)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 6.5 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: Not Available (Critics), Not Available (Audience)

What's This Documentary About?

The title says it all. This is an intervention for humanity’s AI obsession. The documentary dives deep into the ethical, legal, and existential dilemmas surrounding artificial intelligence. And we're up to the part where the hype has died down and the consequences are showing up.

Through interviews with experts, ethicists, technologists, and philosophers, it wrestles with the hard questions.

"Can machines make moral decisions?"

"Should AI have rights?"

And "are we accidentally building the very things that could outthink (or outmaneuver) us?"

This one's not about what AI can do. It's about whether we should let it. And that makes it one of the most important “hey, maybe we need to pump the brakes” documentaries on the list.

Why It's Awesome

Right from the jump, this doc refuses to play nice.

It’s the cinematic equivalent of sitting your future robot overlord down and saying, "Okay, we need boundaries.”

No Hollywood drama here, just real talk about algorithms running the world and how little we seem to be doing to slow it down.

This doc is all about clarity. It doesn't talk down to you but it doesn't let tech off the hook either.

After watching it, you're left feeling mildly panicked and questioning your life choices.

#9. The Thinking Game (2024)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 7.6 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: Not Available (Critics), Not Available (Audience)

What's This Documentary About?

What if the next cold war isn't fought with nukes, but with neural nets?

This doc follows Demis Hassabis, the brains behind DeepMind, from his early years as a chess prodigy. He eventually becomes one of the most influential figures in the field of artificial intelligence today.

It dives into how a childhood board game obsession, neuroscience research, and a wild streak of innovation led to world-changing breakthroughs like AlphaGo and AlphaFold.

You get a backstage pass into the war rooms of DeepMind, where the race to build true machine intelligence is both exhilarating and ethically exhausting.

Keep in mind that this doc is fresh out the gates. The early reviews are solid, so the ratings will likely climb as word spreads.

Why It's Awesome

This is real-world AI at full throttle.

No evil robot cliches, just the raw ambition to outthink ourselves, and the human consequences that come with it.

What I like most about this doc is how personal it feels. You're not just watching lines of code. You're in the room, watching some of the world's smartest minds debate, doubt, and build the future in real time.

It's thrilling. It's refreshing. And leaves you wondering: do we trust the people steering the ship... or the machine learning that's quietly taking the wheel.

This one's a great one for all those people who like origin stories and behind-the-scenes moments.

The Thinking Game earns its spot on this list.

#8. Unknown: Killer Robots (2023)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 6.4 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 100% (Critics), 72% (Audience)

What's This Documentary About?

What happens when machines that learn start making life-or-death decisions on their own?

This doc throws you into the heart of a military-industrial arms race, where AI-powered robotics aren't sci-fi nightmares. They're the next generation of soldiers.

You'll hear from weapon designers, strategists, engineers, and activists as they reveal what's really going on behind closed doors.

You'll see autonomous drones, robot combat units, lethal machines that can hunt, and strike without a human thumb on the trigger.

This doc tracks the rise of these technologies and what it means if we don't stop to question the moral code being programmed into them.

Why It's Awesome

This doc proves that "killer robots" aren't just for Hollywood.

We're talking real-world military tech inching closer to autonomous killing with every software update. And yeah, it's terrifying.

No CGI. No dramatized effects. Just raw, real footage. And honestly, it's scarier than any special effects I've seen.

And somewhere around the halfway mark, it hits you: if these machines did decide to turn on us... we'd have zero chance. Not because of malice, but because we already gave them the keys.

It's eerie. It's urgent. And proves the future isn't coming... it's already here, armed and operational.

#7. The Age of A.I. (2019)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 7.8 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 84% (Critics), 72% (Audience)

What's This Documentary About?

Hosted by Iron Man himself, The Age of A.I. is a mini doc-series that explores how artificial intelligence is already changing our world. From healthcare and robotics to space and deepfake technology.

Across its episodes, you'll meet real people whose lives are being transformed by AI.

You'll watch a musician with ALS regain his voice, a farmer boost crop yields with machine learning, and a NASA team teach robots to navigate Mars. Incredible.

It's packed with mind-blowing tech, heartwarming stories, and just enough Tony Stark energy to keep you glued to the screen.

This one's a cracker of a series... binge-worthy, brainy, and surprisingly human.

Why It's Awesome

This series hit the sweet spot between accessibility and depth. It shows you what AI does, through real-world examples that feel more sci-fact than sci-fi.

The tone is optimistic, the production is slick, and Robert Downey Jr. brings charisma without drowning it in Hollywood gloss.

You'll walk away thinking less about killer robots and more about how AI might cure diseases, prevent disasters, and maybe help a stroke survivor speak again using a digital voice clone.

If you're new to the AI rabbit hole, The Age of A.I is a great entry point as it's equal parts education and uplifting.

Watch it.

#6. A.rtificial I.mmortality (2021)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 5.9 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 100% (Critics), Not Available (Audience)

What's This Documentary About?

Ever wondered if death was just a vulnerability waiting to be patched?

A.rtificial I.mmorality dives into the bold, unsettling idea that maybe, just maybe, our minds, memories, and "selves" can outlast flesh and bone.

This doc is a real-world look at how scientists, futurists, and philosophers are trying to digitize the soul. Think AI powered avatars, memory uploads, and virtual minds-clones designed to live on long after your physical body gives out.

Director Ann Shin grounds it all with a deeply personal lens, reflecting on her father's struggle with dementia while questioning what makes "you", you?

It's a quiet, thought-provoking ride into the future of consciousness.

Why It's Awesome

This isn't a pitch for eternal life. It's a sober probe into whether immortality is worth the price of admission.

If you could preserve your memories forever, would you really be you? Or just a digital echo with your face and voice, parroting patterns of who you used to be?

After watching this doc you'll be rethinking identity, mortality, and what it really means to be human. The tech side of things is pretty mind-blowing, too.

If you're into deep questions, digital afterlives, or want to explore how far AI is willing to go to keep us alive.

A.rtificial I.mmortality is a must-watch.

#5. iHuman (2019)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 6.7 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: Not Available (Critics), 60% (Audience)

What's This Documentary About?

Ever get that creepy feeling that the algorithms running your phone might already know you better than you know yourself?

iHuman peels back the curtain, revealing just how deeply AI is embedding itself into every fiber of society, like data mining, social control, surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, the works.

Featuring interviews with heavyweight researchers and thinkers like Ilya Sutskever and Jürgen Schmidhuber, among others who are either building or warning about AI. This doc doesn’t just speculate, it confronts the hard truths head-on.

It asks raw questions like "who gets to write the code that governs our lives?" And probably the scariest, "When AI systems can predict behavior, influence opinion, or even guess who you are, how easy does it become to manipulate the entire population?"

Why It's Awesome

Forget the sleek TED Talk version of AI.

iHuman drags you straight into the shadows where the real decisions are being made.

It's unsettling but it doesn't shy away. Between expert interviews and haunting visuals, it shows how today's convenience, such as recommendation algorithms and data harvesting, could become the foundation of tomorrow's control grid.

Once you watch it, you don't just shrug and go back to scrolling. You start asking ChatGPT, "Who's watching my watch history" and "Who's curating my feed and why?"

If you've ever held your phone and felt uneasy about what's "behind the screen," iHuman isn't just recommended, it's essential viewing.

#4. AlphaGo (2017)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 7.8 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 100% (Critics), 100% (Audience)

What's This Documentary About?

This doc explores one of the biggest showdowns in AI history: AlphaGo vs. Lee Sedol.

If you've never heard of the game Go, know this... it makes chess look like a warm-up.

With more possible move combinations than atoms in the universe, Go has long been considered unbeatable by machines. That is, until DeepMind came along.

The film follows the legendary 2016 battle between AlphaGo (an AI built by Demis Hassabis's DeepMind team) and Lee Sedol, an 18-time world champion.

What unfolds is way more than just a game. It's a tense, emotional clash between human instinct and machine logic, captured in front of a global audience holding its breath.

Why It's Awesome

It's rare to see a documentary turn a board game into a psychological thriller.

It’s the moment the world realized AI could think creatively, and beat us at our own intuition.

And it has the creds to prove it. 100% critic rating and 100% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That kind of praise is rarer than a flawless Go match.

Also worth noting is if you watched The Thinking Game earlier mentioned in this list, you'll recognize the mastermind behind it all, Demis Hassabis. AlphaGo is his origin story.

It's where DeepMind first made headlines for cracking a game humanity spent millennia trying to master.

#3. Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 7.0 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 92% (Critics), 68% (Audience)

What's This Documentary About?

Ever wanted to hear Werner Herzog ponder the internet like it's an alien lifeform? Well you're in luck!

Lo and behold is a philosophical stroll through the past, present, and future of our hyperconnected world. It is told through Herzog’s distinct, hypnotic narration and deeply curious lens.

From the invention of the internet at UCLA, to AI, robotics, cyberwarfare and even digital addiction, this doc touches just about every tech frontier you can imagine.

Herzog interviews everyone from Elon Musk to cybersecurity experts to monks who've sworn off technology, stitching together a story that's part love letter, part warning label.

Why It's Awesome

You're not watching it for stats and code snippets. You're watching to have your brain pleasantly scrambled by Herzog's trademark existential wonder.

This isn't just "here's how the internet works."

It's "what does the internet want?"

This doc made me laugh a few times at how far we've come. Then made me sit in uncomfortable silence thinking about where we're going.

Whether he's musing on robots playing soccer or asking if the internet dreams of itself, Herzog manages to make it all feel poetic, and slightly terrifying.

Watch this one when you're in the mood to question reality... and you're Wi-Fi password.

#2. Coded Bias (2020)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 6.8 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 100% (Critics), 60% (Audience)

What's This Documentary About?

Code Bias starts with a simple question: what if the systems we trust to be "neutral" are actually reinforcing discrimination?

The film follows Joy Buolamwini, a researcher at MIT, who discovers that facial recognition systems fail to identify her face, until she puts on a white mask. That small glitch opens up a massive conversation about how algorithms are trained, who builds them, and who gets left out.

From London to New York, this doc unpacks how AI is already shaping policing, hiring, surveillance, and decision-making. Often without oversight, accountability, or fairness.

It's not about the future of bias.

It's about the bias we've already coded into the present.

Why It's Awesome

You know how people say "the algorithm knows me"?

Yeah, well this film shows the algorithm doesn’t know all of us equally.

It's not just about data privacy or tech gone rogue. It's about inequality baked into the backend. From law enforcement to job applications, the doc lays out how flawed code can reinforce old prejudices, just faster and with more reach.

And it's not subtle. You'll see how facial recognition misidentifies women and people of color, how AI systems can become silent gatekeepers, and how the same tech that powers your Netflix queue can quietly affect real lives.

Coded Bias hits you in the gut because it's real. It's personal. It's already here. And it's not just sounding the alarm... it's giving the mic to the people trying to fix it.

#1. The Social Dilemma (2020)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 7.6 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 84% (Critics), 83% (Audience)

What's This Documentary About?

Coming in at number 1 is The Social Dilemma, a doc that doesn’t explore what AI might do in the distant future... it reveals what it’s already doing right under our noses.

This one cracks open the black box of social media algorithms, showing how AI is shaping what we see, think, buy, believe, and even vote for.

You'll hear from the people who helped build these systems, former insiders from Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram who now want the world to know what they've unleashed.

It's a behind-the-scenes look at how AI-driven platforms optimize for engagement at all costs, even if it means fueling outrage, polarizing communities, or pushing disinformation.

And the worst part? The algorithm knows you better than you know yourself.

If you've ever opened your phone to check one thing, only to look up hours later wondering how you ended up watching flat-earth videos and doomsday preppers? This one's for you.

Why It's Awesome

You're not watching this to learn how tech works. You're watching it to realize you're in it! Right now.

And that's what makes this doc hit so damn hard. It’s part warning, part mirror, and everything it shows is already happening.

The people interviewed helped build the very platforms they're on and are now warning the world about.

There's dramatization, there's algorithmic puppeteering, there’s a teenager slowly unraveling because his phone knows him better than his family does.

It sounds dramatic... and it is. But it's also painfully accurate.

After this one, you'll never look at a "like," or "share," or "recommended for you" the same way again. You might even switch off notifications. Maybe.

This is a digital intervention, and it's a must-watch if you want to understand just how deep the rabbit hole of algorithmic control really goes.

Bonus Watch: What's Next: The Future with Bill Gates (2024)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 6.2 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 80% (Critics), Not Available (Audience)

What's This Documentary About?

This docuseries is a more personal take on where humanity is heading and it's narrated, funded, and driven by one of the most recognizable names in tech: Bill Gates.

Instead of doomscrolling or doomsaying, What's Next focuses on how AI, climate innovation, healthcare, and clean energy might just be the keys to fixing our mess.

Gates travels the world, meeting scientists, engineers, researchers, and policymakers who tackle the world's most significant problems.

Spoiler alert... AI is everywhere.

Whether it's used to model pandemics, design better batteries, or transform education, the message is clear... the tech is here. Now what?

Why It's Awesome

I'm currently halfway through this one (because watching all these AI documentaries is a full-time job). Not complaining boss.

But so far? It's smart, insightful, and refreshingly solutions-focused. It's a solid one to end the blog with, after all the killer robots and algorithmic doom.

There's no fearmongering. No “robots will kill us” montage. Instead, Gates takes a thoughtful, practical approach to tech's future, especially around artificial intelligence.

I like the balance this doc has between real-world stories and serious brainpower.

This one earns its spot for showing how AI isn't just a threat.

It's a tool.

And in the right hands, it might actually make things better!

Wrapping up

So there you have it!

The top 12 AI documentaries to binge before the machines start curating your watchlist for you. From emotional androids and killer robots to mind-uploading futurists and whistleblowing tech insiders, this covers every corner of the AI rabbit hole.

Whether you're new to the topic or whispering around your phone just in case, these docs will feed your brain, stir up some existential dread, and maybe even make you change your privacy settings. Again.

Because understanding AI isn't just about the tech, it's about power, ethics, humanity, and who's really pulling the strings.

Now go watch them... before the algorithm decides you'd prefer a cooking show instead.