Some more recent female cyborgs may appear to have more power – but their sexuality is still subject to control by their creators, tapping into our fears about what might happen if we endow female androids with the full agency of Frankenstein’s creature. For instance, in Alex Garland’s 2014 provocative sci-fi Ex Machina, young programmer Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) asks tech company CEO Nathan (Oscar Isaac) why he has given his robot woman Ava (Alicia Vikander) sexuality. Caleb is suspicious of this aspect of Ava’s creation, though Nathan assures him that he has enabled Ava to experience physical erotic pleasure. As the film continues, Ava also proves to have agency and intelligence. Yet, Ex Machina is like so many other stories that imagine one of the driving forces behind creating embodied AIs must be to create a compliant cyborg vagina.

Ava surpasses her creator, but she is still forced to rely on the seductive possibilities of femininity in order to achieve freedom.

In the season two premiere of Westworld – which imagines a futuristic, Wild West theme park populated by compliant cyborg hosts – we see programmer Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) declaring to android Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) that ‘you frighten me sometimes’ – evoking once more the idea of the bride as more terrifying than her male predecessor or any potential mate she might find. The current trajectory of Westworld suggests that it has two brides: rancher’s daughter Dolores and brothel madam Maeve (Thandie Newton), both vengeful female creations who have exceeded their male creators. Their desires – sexual or otherwise – pose a threat to patriarchal order and the park’s designers’ understanding of their AI creations.