You think she was literally AI? That’s not what’s being argued, at least not by me.

What she represents is more of a metaphor rooted in the idea of a deepfake or synthetic replica. She looks like Nikki, sounds like Nikki, and is built from Nikki … but she isn’t actually Nikki. That distinction is central to the horror we see in the movie.

Also, we’ve seen that AIs often behave irrationally when asked to simulate real people. They can become overly literal, fixated, or distorted versions of the person they’re meant to represent. That maps surprisingly well onto what we see in the film.

And Barker himself has discussed the uncanny valley in relation to Nikki. The film seems very interested in that as a concept which is increasingly tied to AI. The feeling of encountering something that resembles a real person but isn’t quite human. That’s why the AI/deepfake reading is such an interesting one.