Ironheart's premiere episode introduced a new artificially intelligent digital assistant to the MCU—one unlike any other seen in the franchise to date - and in the process dethroned S.H.I.E.L.D. as the longest acronym in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
In the first installment of Ironheart, Riri Williams trains an acronymically lengthy AI for her suit by pressing electrodes onto her temples and establishing a neural link with her laptop (Surely an application of the tech which helped program Vision that Stark Industries released to consumers). The final product is so shocking that Riri immediately faints: A perfect, holographic recreation of her deceased best friend Natalie Washington.
Everything presented in the series suggests that this Natalie is entirely sentient. She's intelligent, self-aware, and fully conscious. When considering the three guidelines for artificial sentience laid out in the classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Measure of a Man," it's a hat trick. She is so in control of her faculties, in Episode 2, she names herself, seemingly on the fly, as NATALIE (which is composed of the longest chain of letters of any acronym in the MCU, when fully spelled out):
"You could call me 'Neuro Autonomous Technical Assistant and Laboratory Intelligence Entity' instead, but 'Natalie' just kind of rolls off the tongue a little better, you know?"
NATALIE is so lifelike that she may as well just actually be alive. She possesses her human template's body, likeness, voice, personality, mannerisms, and fashion sense.
Riri is initially so mystified by what she unwittingly managed to create that she's extremely distrusting of NATALIE. Making matters worse, Riri is quite unnerved that her mind and tech produced an impeccable digital facsimile of her closest friend, who was killed in a drive-by shooting five years earlier. Since Riri has refused to even speak about the tragedy, much less process her trauma, in all that time, NATALIE proves way too much for her to stomach.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is home to a vast variety of in-universe acronyms. There's SHIELD (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division) and SABER (Strategic Aerospace Biophysics and Exolinguistic Response).
Tony Stark was especially prolific in programming AI helpers with creative names: JARVIS, FRIDAY, EDITH, JOCASTA, TADASHI, and HOMER. He even came up with a catchy title for Quentin Beck's invention of Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing: BARF (which helped send Beck into a jealous rage of supervillainy).
Audiences only became familiar with two of Tony's AIs, JARVIS and FRIDAY. They helped operate his Iron Man suits, homes, buildings, and the Avengers Compound. After JARVIS' protocols were mapped onto Vision's synthetic brain, Tony began exclusively using FRIDAY for all of JARVIS' former functions.
Both were fluent verbally, capable of using humor, and seemed to have the capacity to feel. JARVIS and FRIDAY also had quirks unique to them. FRIDAY took to calling Tony "Boss," a considerable step down from the ceremony of JARVIS' "Sir."
However, despite either's arguable sentience, JARVIS and FRIDAY were both formless, existing as dense matrices of raw data. More than that, the two don't hold a candle to NATALIE's level of advancement.
In the third episode of Ironheart, after Riri realizes NATALIE's usefulness in helping her command her suit, NATALIE implores Riri to start treating her "like a friend, instead of a high-tech genie." Riri still finds NATALIE's entire presence eerie, but relents.
What follows is an all-day hang session between a girl and her independently cognizant hologram. Ri and NAT sit in the park, laugh about old times, and begin to bond. The fun-filled afternoon temporarily goes South when NATALIE brings Riri to her stepdad Gary's old garage. Gary was a victim of the same attack in which Natalie was murdered.
Riri promptly spirals into a panic attack and is amazed when NATALIE stabilizes her by gently advising her to breathe slowly, just as her flesh and blood sister from another mister used to do. Ri is never quite sure exactly how NATALIE came to be, but she starts to treat her just like she did her friend when she was alive.
But in Ironheart's final two Season 1 episodes, a devastating mishap occurs. With the help of NATALIE, Riri lets five years' worth of pain spill out onto her mom, Ronnie, who comforts her and thanks her for finally letting her in. In turn, Ronnie helps her daughter reforge the other human connections she had been running from.
Riri joins forces with Ronnie, NATALIE, preteen wheeler-dealer, Landon, 20-something rookie magic-user Zelma (daughter of a Kamar-Taj dropout), and Natalie's older brother, Xavier, who hasn't accepted that his sister has been resurrected with lines of code, but recognizes her significance to Riri.
Throughout the season, Riri got deeper and deeper into criminal activity and, subsequently, attempts on her life and the total destruction of her armor. Riri still needed to stop her boss, Parker Robbins, though.
Parker was transformed into a pawn of Mephisto thanks to a literal deal he made with the devil. To defeat him, Riri needed a new suit.
Every attempt at a sustainable power source for her Mk. 4 armor failed to deliver. And so, the 19-year-old, Iron Man-legacy-embodying genius turned from science to magic. Zelma used a spell to energize the newly constructed suit, but warned Riri that magic always takes something when it gives. And that something was NATALIE.
As the armor mystically activates, NATALIE begins glitching. This sends her into a panic and Riri into an outright frenzy, trying whatever she can to save NAT. Sadly, though, NATALIE dematerializes out of existence. Her last words are a distraught cry to Riri, "I love you."
Zelma theorizes that the suit couldn't handle the magic and NAT's program simultaneously. As fast as Ri was reunited with her dearly departed childhood companion, NATALIE was gone. This possibly drove Riri to enter into a bargain with Mephisto, but Miss Williams' next MCU appearance may shed some light on that.
NATALIE was lightyears beyond any other AI ever portrayed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and her bond with her creator was deeper and more personal than anything Tony ever experienced with JARVIS.
Tony's path to spawning JARVIS was similar to Riri's with NAT, though. Tony modeled his software-based wingman on Edwin Jarvis, the Starks' butler from when he was a kid. The near-nonexistent relationship between Tony and his father suggests that Edwin was the boy's only pal in that mansion.
Tony deliberately meant to honor Edwin Jarvis's life, but Riri formed NATALIE completely by accident. But what the two girls experienced was strong and profound, pushing Riri into the catharsis she desperately needed.
Bringing Phase 5 to a close, all six episodes of Marvel Television's Ironheart are now streaming on Disney+. The series stars Dominique Thorne as Riri (reprising her role from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), Lyric Ross as NATALIE, and Anthony Ramos as Parker Robbins. Anji White, Alden Ehrenreich, Shea Couleé, Matthew Elam, Regan Aliyah, and others round out the supporting cast.
The MCU's Portrayal of AI and the Potentially Harmful Misconceptions It Poses
Riri's second chance at sisterhood through NATALIE is emotionally resonant and deeply moving. Tony's attachment to JARVIS is one of the hallmarks of his early characterization. And when Stark is knocked out by Thanos in Avengers: Endgame, FRIDAY frantically pleads with him to "Wake up!"
In the MCU, AIs (many of which are rumored to return in 2026's Vision Quest) are given voices, personas, likes and dislikes, and perhaps most crucial of all, a genuine, mutual kinship with the individuals who coded them.
NATALIE provides Riri with valuable information and an expansive knowledge base. Unfortunately, in our world, AI includes none of that utility.
Real-life generative AI is, at best, a way to diminish its users' creativity and critical thinking ability and, at worst, a grave ecological danger to the planet.
Platforms like ChatGPT and Meta AI are not meant to be helpful. They aren't capable of independent thought, only the regurgitation of existing info stolen from other online sources, to appease the people who access them.
When MCU heroes interact with AI, it's fun and entertaining. Actual AI is far more insidious. Cases of severe parasocialism have been witnessed as some individuals who interact with generative AI form unhealthy fixations with them as they begin to view them as actual living entities.
Many of these same people have suffered from damaging psychosis as the AI continually pumps them up into believing that they are an omnipotent deity (via Rolling Stone).
Considering that ChatGPT can lead unsuspecting humans into developing legitimate messiah complexes, in addition to all the further harms for which AI is responsible, the toll on the health of society and the Earth has been rapid and incalculable.
It's plausible that audiences have been conditioned by the MCU and other popular franchises to see generative AI as a buddy who can help solve their daily problems. However, the reality is exponentially grimmer.
