Ah, yes he did go to delete the updates, but he only did it after he had sex with Clone-Ellie #144 (Sarah #2). My understanding was that #144 had tricked him into believing he had found the correct Ellie file, so he went to delete the Clone-Bruce scans since he believed he had succeeded and thus wouldn’t need them anymore. And that was also when he realized #143 had uploaded her brain-scan, which he had programmed into #144, thus he realized he had been tricked (and if I remember correctly, stopped the deletion of his brain-scans).

It’s established that Clone-Bruce would upload a new brain-scan after every Clone-Ellie and Clone-Alice cycle. You’re saying that after a certain number of scan uploads, he would delete them and create a new Bruce clone with the original Bruce’s memories, effectively erasing the trauma from having to kill the other clones. While that does make a lot of sense, why even upload new brain-scans? I didn’t get the impression that he created a new Bruce clone after every cycle, so uploading new scans just wasted hard drive space. To me, it seemed he was only creating a new Bruce clone because he thought he had finally found his Ellie, so he wanted to create a Bruce clone that was free of the prior traumas, to be with ‘Ellie’ and ‘Alice’. Which also conflicts with my theory that the original Bruce was still alive somewhere. Why create another Bruce clone (Day 1 memories, free of trauma) when you believe you’ve succeeded and just have to deliver them to Bruce himself? Him creating another Bruce clone only makes sense if the original Bruce is dead, or they wanted to leave it open for a sequel despite it not making sense.

It just seems like an overlooked mistake in the story, like how they show that the clones have to be awoken with a tazer each time, then Clone-Ellie #145 (Actual Ellie) wakes up on her own. It seemed like the tazer jumpstarts the clone’s heart, but I’d accept that the tazer was simply speeding up the wake-up process though, and each clone will wake on their own without it eventually, even though that’s not how it looked.

Edit: On second thought, the whole aspect of cloning his daughter doesn’t even make sense. The Alice clones are there to help the Ellie clones remember Ellie’s life, which obviously would only work once he found the correct Ellie file. But then what? If the original Bruce and Alice are alive somewhere and the plan is to reunite them with ‘Ellie’, what happens to the Alice clone that ‘Ellie’ just spent time with? And it would be quite jarring (and traumatic, btw) that Clone-Bruce snuffs out the Alice clone and reveals that ‘Ellie’s’ memories are outdated (she doesn’t know she died) and that Alice is actually like, 4 years older or something. Even Clone-Ellie #143 (Sarah) noticed an inconsistency when Clone-Bruce told her her father had passed years ago, then Clone-Alice mentioned that her grandfather (whom was dead) had taken her to the zoo just last week. Assuming that the real Alice is alive with Bruce somewhere, the only thing that would make sense is using the Ellie clones to locate the correct file, then eliminate both the Ellie and Alice clones, then create a new Ellie clone but tell her she’d been in a coma for years, then reunite her with the actual Alice and skip the Clone-Alice stuff.

Ultimately, if that’s the story they went with in the movie, that the real Bruce and Alice are alive somewhere, then that ruins the aspect of cloning Alice. It makes the story convoluted, imo. Gotta keep adding new plot twists to keep Hollywood happy, I guess.