(FORTUNE Magazine) – A.I., Steven Spielberg's new film about a robot who can love, seems to have about as much verisimilitude as his dinosaur movie. It features Jude Law as a robot gigolo, and David, a disturbingly lifelike "mecha." But Paul Rosenbloom, deputy director of the intelligent systems division at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute, noticed only one unrealistic touch. "The power supply," he says. "David should need a tune-up at some point."

Creepy as Spielberg's vision is, battery life seems to be the only quibble that artificial intelligence experts have with the movie. "He had the time frame about right," says Tom Mitchell, incoming president of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. "It's after the polar caps melt. If you extrapolate a lot of technology into the future, you get to the questions he's raising."

Yes, yes, but let's get to the point: When are the robot nannies coming? Honda and Sony have built humanoid robots. Cynthia Breazeal, a professor at MIT's Media Lab, has built a robot that displays rudimentary emotional responses, like moving its eyebrows or ears. And Sony's Aibo proved that people could love a robot dog. So just imagine how popular a robotic Jude Law could be.

--Jason Tanz