‘Cupertino’s Sentient AI Twist Comes With Wild Real-Life Timing: Creators & Star React

Cupertino‘s latest episode ended with a major doozy: Michael (Mike Colter) and Olivia’s (Rachel Keller) new client, who’s only ever met with them virtually, is not only a deepfake, but a self-learning AGI (artificial general intelligence) that wants to sue its creator to reinstitute regulatory and ethical controls over itself after becoming sentient.

Bo (who’s portrayed by Rob McClure) wants the guardrails back on for itself and other AGIs like it, and it thinks Price, Siffre & Associates is just the right firm for the job. (“I know I don’t look dangerous,” Bo tells them, “but on my own? I really am.”)

This big reveal comes at a curious time, as society still grapples with a very palpable sense of panic over the rise of AGI technology — including a recent warning from certain CEOs that it could predictably cause human extinction in the matter of a decade.

At CBS’s press tour in September, TV Insider asked series creators Robert and Michelle King if they had any thoughts about bringing Bo’s story into focus amid the uptick in real-life alarms sounding over AGI.

“I mean, it’s all very recent how this has grown like a firestorm. On the one hand, you wish it would cool down a little because, just speaking selfishly, you don’t want people to get so sick of it. They don’t want to see shows about it. But Michelle and I have always thought it’s about entertainment and not about preaching or being earnest,” Robert King said in response. “So I think it will be atomic to what people are reading in the news and a way to look at subjects. We have episodes specifically about the danger of AGI and what it could do — that whole kind of aspect of it, how real it is…. So each episode focuses on another aspect of it.”

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Michelle King then added, “One can look at it either way. It’s either exactly the right time or exactly the wrong time. The only thing I know for certain is Rob McClure is precisely the right actor for Bo. He is so perfect for it that I’m thrilled that people get to watch him portray it.”

TV Insider also caught up with Rob McClure at the series’ red carpet premiere to reflect on how art accidentally imitates life in his storyline, and he said, “The Kings have always had a crystal ball. I remember on The Good Wife, we would film an episode, and the week it was going to air, the same story would hit the news. You’d be like, ‘How are you doing that?’ With Cupertino, these scripts that I’m reading, I just pray they’re wrong.”

Noam Galai / Getty Images for CBS

He also explained the decision to create the character’s on-screen persona as one that could just as easily be human as machine, saying, “We had conversations about, ‘How much do we want to play that, right?’ And what they ultimately said was, ‘I think the most horrifying version is the one that’s indiscernible.’ So it was actually simpler, and there are scripts coming that test those boundaries.”

Cupertino, Thursdays, 10/9c, CBS

– Additional reporting by Meredith Jacobs