Age of Ultron sent a pretty clear message to the Marvel Cinematic Universe that artificial intelligence should not be messed with in any circumstance. A certain doctor on a certain ABC series may have taken all of the right precautions, but nobody could have predicted what happened with his assistant. The seemingly harmless robot was part of an experiment that should have some dangerous and mystical consequences. While the Life Model Decoy named AIDA on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. draws from Marvel comics in a few ways, she is still quite an original character — and that's even before she messed with dark magic and started building herself a brain with a 3D printer.
There is a character named AIDA in Marvel Comics, but it's not exactly the possessed robot that we've come to know on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. That Artificial Intelligence Data Analyser invented by Tom Thumb was given a female personality, but never a female body. In the comics, she's kind of just a face on a computer screen. As his assistant, she and Thumb had a friendly relationship, similar to what we've seen on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. so far. She and a monkey called Ape X, or Xina attempted to make a robotic body for Tom when he died, but never finished.
Life Model Decoys, on the other hand, have a different origin in the comics. They were actually mentioned by Tony Stark in The Avengers too, but more as a throwaway joke. Life Model Decoys in Marvel comics are robots designed to look like real people. They were developed by S.H.I.E.L.D. and are used both as protection and as a way to trick enemies. They can go undercover. They can fill out an army. The uses for robots like this in a comic universe are practically endless.
I feel like the former is what Dr. Holden Radcliffe wants AIDA to do for S.H.I.E.L.D. in the future. He envisioned robots that would replace innocent bystanders and assist threats and battles without having to take up arms. That said, she has a long way to go — and that evil book surely isn't helping.
Images: Jennifer Clasen/ABC; Giphy
