in Ex Machina. Photograph: PR

Did you program her to flirt with me? Domhnall Gleesons character asks robot inventor Oscar Isaac in Ex Machina. To which the scientific answer would be: Well, duh! The her in question is Ava, a shapely, state-of-the-art android, half-transparent plastic, half-Alicia Vikander. Isaac wants Gleeson to give his latest invention the Turing test to determine whether or not she is indistinguishable from a human. Thanks to Avas beguiling, seductive intelligence, the interviews take on a certain Basic Instinct aspect, her suggestive retorts rebounding around the glass walls of her cell. Gleesons not-so-scientific verdict: I feel that shes fucking amazing, dude!

Ex Machina is a smart, elegant thriller posing some juicy questions about artificial intelligence, consciousness and gender. It is also a movie where the guys keep their clothes on and the women dont. Looking back over movie history, it is difficult to find a female robot/android/cyborg who hasnt been created (by men, of course) in the form of an attractive young woman and therefore played by one. This often enables the movie to raise pertinent points about consciousness and technology while also giving male viewers an eyeful of female flesh. The non-scientific term for this is having your cake and eating it.

Being literally objectified women, female robots have traditionally been vehicles for the worst male tendencies. Invariably, inventors ideas of the perfect woman translate into one who is unquestioningly subservient and/or sexually obliging. A Stepford wife, to cite the best-known example. Or, as Blade Runner dismissively labels one female replicant, a basic pleasure model. The trashier end of sci-fi movies is littered with these basic pleasure models: they cater to wealthy males urges in Westworld, theyre traded like used cars in Cherry 2000, they go-go dance in gold bikinis and prey on wealthy men in Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, which inspired Austin Powers fembots, with their weaponised breasts. Theyre all programmed to flirt.

But once made flesh, these fantasies have a nasty habit of biting their male creators on the well, on the penis in the case of Eve of Destruction, a trashy sub-Terminator sci-fi in which a malfunctioning android, played by Rene Soutendijk, goes rogue. Sporting a red leather jacket, a black miniskirt and a big machine gun, this Eve sticks it to an assortment of sexist scumbags, before activating the nuclear device hidden in her vagina (havent all women got one?). Most movies are slightly more nuanced, but female robots rarely stick to their programs, leading to chaos and destruction.

It was all there right from the start, in what must be the great-grandma of female-robot movies: Fritz Langs Metropolis. The robot anti-heroine of the piece is a complex construction: mad scientist Rotwang has modelled her on his lost love, Hel, who also happens to be the mother of the movies hero, Freder. When Rotwang brings the robot to life, she takes on the likeness of the saintly Maria, Freders love interest (the real and robot Marias are played by Brigitte Helm). No wonder Freder is driven to his bed when he finds this false Maria (whom he takes to be the real Maria) in the arms of his own father. Sigmund Freud would probably have done the same.

And of course, Metropoliss robot is irresistibly seductive, with her sashaying hips and art deco fetish-gear bodywork. Robot Maria is deployed as an erotic dancer at Rotwangs club, where her burlesque gyrations drive the ogling menfolk into a frenzy. Posing as the real Maria, she ultimately foments a workers uprising which threatens to bring down civilisation. Like so many of her descendants, Metropoliss Maria embodies all the old saws that have defined women since the year dot: shes the whore of Babylon, the temptress Eve, Pandora and her box, Pygmalions Galatea, the femme fatale.

Our machines are projections of us. Theyre dreams or metaphors for our own anxieties, says Sophie Mayer, a lecturer in film studies at Queen Mary University of London, who has written on robotics and gender in cinema. Metropolis was made at the height of Freud and womens suffrage and the communist struggle around male labour. Often the anxiety in question in these movies is female empowerment, says Mayer. Cyborgs have powers and freedoms that human females are rarely allowed to have. They misunderstand the rules about gender behaviour. They can be more sexually aggressive. Ultimately, these empowered women must be punished. Metropoliss robot Maria is burnt at the stake like a witch, for example. The resolution always assures us the status quo is going to be preserved.

Ex Machina at least moves the debate on somewhat. For one thing, it asks the pertinent question of why a robot should have sexuality at all. Is sexuality a component of consciousness? Its tricky, says Alex Garland, Ex Machinas writer and director. Embodiment having a body seems to be imperative to consciousness, and we dont have an example of something that has a consciousness that doesnt also have a sexual component. If you have created a consciousness you would want it to have the capacity for pleasurable relationships, so it doesnt seem unreasonable that a machine have a sexual component. We wouldnt demand it be removed from a human, so why a machine?

Garland points out that Avas femininity is only external. People instinctively think there is a difference between male and female brains, but in many ways it doesnt stack up when you look at it hard, he says. Her seductiveness make sense in the context of the story, he argues. If youre going to use a heterosexual male to test this consciousness, you would test it with something it could relate to. We have fetishised young women as objects of seduction, so in that respect, Ava is the ideal missile to fire.

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Ex Machina and sci-fi's obsession with sexy female robots