What is a Clanker and why are people on social media using it as an anti-AI slang?

Futuristic scenarios are being painted on social media videos in which hate is rising between humans and so-called “clankers”.

One tongue-in-cheek video illustrates a parent telling their child, “we don’t speak to them,” and another video shows a human telling a robot, “get this dirty clanker out of here!”.

Clanker has become the word that summarises people’s frustrations against artificial intelligence (AI). It is widely used on social media, garnering hundreds of millions of views on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. 

It has even been used by an American senator to promote the regulation of AI chatbots for customer service. 

Where does the term come from?

The term can be traced back to the Star Wars franchise. It is said to have been used in a 2005 Star Wars video game and was also used in the 2008 film “Star Wars: The Clone Wars”.

"Okay, clankers," one character says. "Eat lasers". 

When Euronews Next asked ChatGPT what clanker means, it referenced Star Wars, saying it was used for “battle droids” to refer to the noise they made, but made no mention of the term being anti-AI. 

ChatGPT also said clanker was British military slang, referenced a book series by author Scott Westerfeld, and said it was “general slang” for “something that makes a clanking sound, often a machine or even a person with lots of noisy gear”.

AI-powered large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, are trained on data from the internet, it is not always the latest data. This means AI chatbots may not understand emerging slang or the new use of a word. 

AI anxiety

The term’s rise in popularity comes as people grow fed up with AI hallucinations (when AI tools make things up) and as people worry about the technology eradicating jobs, as AI becomes more widespread.

Across Europe, 42 per cent of employees fear that AI could put their jobs at risk, according to a report by EY published in July. 

Some of the online videos also show a world in which robots and humans live together and have romantic relationships, which comes as a backlash to AI becoming increasingly human-like to the point where people are also reportedly asking chatbots to become their therapists. 

Many of the videos show a dystopian future scenario, with drinking fountains reserved just for “clankers”. But with the pace of AI developing rapidly, that future may not be too far off.