"Steven wanted to embrace and pay homage to Stanley," says "A.I." producer and Spielberg?s longtime associate Kathleen Kennedy. "So he took Stanley?s contribution and added that to his own. There?s no question that this is a movie that has Steven Spielberg?s sensibilities all over it. But the subtext is all Kubrick."

"A.I.," says Jan Harlan, the film?s executive producer and Stanley Kubrick's longtime colleague, "shows a new romanticism that hasn?t been seen on the screen so far: the idea of an artificial being feeling genuine love and a human truly loving an artificial being is quite new territory.

The film takes place in a future when starting a family is subject to strict governmental restrictions. Says Harlan, "Circumstances have changed; technology has increased to an extent that most normal work is performed by robots and we are confronted with the idea of programming a child robot so that he is able to love."

Haley Joel Osment stars as David, the prototype "feeling" robot, who is adopted by Henry and Monica Swinton (SAM ROBARDS and FRANCES O'CONNOR), a Cybertronics employee and his wife, whose own son (JAKE THOMAS) is so ill that he has been cryogenically frozen until a cure can be found.

"David is the top of the line in mechanical development," says Frances O'Connor, who plays Monica, David?s mother. "Unlike the earlier models, he can actually absorb information and images, and collate it in a way that is very human. He also connects these ideas to his emotions. And he starts to think about his own realness."

Jude Law, who has starred in such films as "Enemy at the Gates" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley," stars as Gigolo Joe, a "love mecha" (for "mechanicals") that becomes David?s "scoutmaster," as Spielberg calls the character. Together with Joe, David lights out into the strange, new world to find their true place in the society that created them.

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