Terminator-style artificial intelligence scenarios are just "one to two decades away", according to Google's former chief executive.

Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google and its parent company Alphabet, has said he believes AI technology is developing so quickly it may soon turn against humans.

“All the movie-inspired death scenarios... I can confidently predict to you that they are one to two decades away," Mr Schmidt told a security conference in Munich.

But he added "let’s worry about them in a while", as he highlighted the opportunities AI afforded.

The fear of intelligent robots rising against their human creators has long occupied Hollywood's imagination and was played out in the 1984 film The Terminator, in which a robot assassin disguises himself as a human.