The visual imagery present in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence shows many different ways of expressing the movie's themes of humanity, innocence, love and reality. The way young robot David looks at the world is identified primarily through the way in which he is presented, particularly in relation to the world around him. The first act of the film shows David as a 'double' for the Swinton family's sick child - one shot in particular, of David looking at a picture of the first version of the Swintons, with his face reflected and translucent in the glass, shows just how distant he is from that sort of human connection. Shots of David peering curiously over the counter at his mother show his eyes reflected on the steel countertop, creating another sense of duality.
This innocent distance becomes uglier after he is abandoned in the forest and captured by the Flesh Fair. A man scans David's face, the blue glow revealing the machinery behind his fleshlike skin, showing how David is both human and eerily not. His face is also reflected in various holograms and windshields within Rouge City, including a shit that warps his face through the hologram of Dr. Know. This sense of otherness and duality culminates when David sees (and kills) his own double in the ruins of Manhattan. A later shot in that same scene frames David's face in the empty eye socket of a headless face of another David copy, further showing just how far from unique he truly is. These shots in particular demonstrate Spielberg's dedication to taking David through this world where he has yet to understand just how inhuman he is, because his programmed love has created the desire to be a real boy.
