Sierra Greer's timely and intimate debut, Annie Bot, digs deeply into gendered power relations through the lens of a gradually developing AI who is eager to please her owner. Greer's novel reads as one part slow-burn thriller and one part meditative relationship drama, often forgoing the spectacle of AI for the humanist questions it raises.  

All Annie has ever wanted to do is make her owner, Doug, happy. Annie is a Stella, a fully functioning, female-modeled AI, originally programmed to operate in one of three modes: as a housekeeper, cook, or "Cuddle Bunny." But Doug recently switched her to the autodidactic mode. Now, everything is different. Annie's skill set is more flexible, her ability to learn and grow is advancing quickly, and she's conscious in a way that she wasn't before. Better still, Doug says he likes her this way, that he wants her to be more human. And the only thing that hasn't changed is that Annie wants whatever Doug wants.

But as Annie gradually learns to be more human, she begins to recognize the contradictions between what Doug says he wants and how he reacts to her insights, imperfections, and unpredictable responses. As the tensions within their relationship pile up--and Doug's negative reactions to her become increasingly painful--Annie begins to wonder what world might exist beyond the confines of his home and what her role in such a world might be.

Greer brings Annie's burgeoning consciousness to life with mesmerizing clarity, unspooling the minute details of her daily enlightenments and confusions in ways that makes them more relatable than other-ed. Often, her observations serve as fleeting revelations for readers as well. For instance, Annie notes how "humans talk about their lives with myopic intensity, sharing singular, subjective opinions as if they are each the protagonist of their own novel." It's impossible not to realize alongside Annie the inevitable level of self-absorption that self-awareness can bring. In this way, Annie as an AI serves as an ideal self-aware protagonist: one who is programmed to want, but capable of learning and changing the focal point of her own tumultuous journey the second she comes to consciousness. Even more so, and despite her AI design, Annie proves herself from page one to be first and foremost a compelling protagonist, one readers can empathize with, cringe alongside, and fear for.

But where Annie is an ideal protagonist, Greer smartly steers away from casting Doug as her predictable antagonist. Certainly, he plays the role well in moments of his own fear, anger, and uncertainty. But Greer treats Doug with the same nuanced sensitivity that she uses when handling Annie; he learns and changes at the same time as he, perhaps even more so than Annie, is forced to become self-aware of his own shortcomings. In this way, Greer's emotionally acute novel rejects the false binary of good and evil, right and wrong, as deftly as it rejects the binary of human and nonhuman. 

Annie Bot maintains a crisp pace and steadily builds tension through its claustrophobic setting and Annie's own uncertain future. Greer's direct and concise prose often enhances the suffocating atmosphere; just as Annie cannot escape the walls of Doug's home for most of the novel, readers cannot escape the impact of the next sentence, each one delivering another figurative blow to Annie's confidence or certainty. In one tense sequence, Annie's sensitivity to Doug's moods results in a spiral of quick succession: "Obviously, it was a fight. She knew that. Her question was stupid. But she can't figure out what she did to make him so angry, and this puzzle tortures her. She can't fix it, she can't reduce his displeasure when she doesn't know what she did to cause it." This inescapability illustrates Annie's position in Doug's house, which becomes the novel's central tension. Is it possible to escape the power dynamics of intimate relationships? And, if it is, is it worth losing the relationship itself to do so?

While these emotional tensions form the novel's heart, Annie Bot also succeeds in meticulously crafting a fascinating world that seems capable of housing endless other stories and what ifs. Through Annie's journey, readers see not only the corporation that seeks to commodify the results of Doug and Annie's internal conflicts, but also the resulting ethical debates people beyond their household are forced to face daily. Even Annie's Stella functions are custom-created by Greer to push on these questions of ethical and relational limitations. The moments Annie must raise her body temperature because she senses Doug's arousal, or the custom changes Doug can make to Annie's appearance through special-order tune-ups are all technical details. Yet in Greer's clever hands, even the technical becomes achingly indicative of so much more. --Alice Martin

Sierra Greer (photo: Dittmeier)

Sierra Greer is a writer and former high school English teacher. She holds an M.A. in the Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University, and lives in rural Connecticut. Her debut novel, Annie Bot (to be published by Mariner Books on March 19, 2024) features a sentient female robot, her human owner, and the developing power dynamics between them.

How did you develop the concept for this novel?

Where something starts is not necessarily where it's going. Annie Bot was not an AI idea in the first place at all. I'm a very organic writer; I don't plan things out. I don't have outlines, typically. I was taking a break from another novel that wasn't working, and I started tinkering around with this consciousness that woke up in a closet. She turned into this robot-maid, and I wrote a short story about her. At the end of that short story, this other robot Annie showed up. Afterward I was really intrigued with this other character--this Annie person--who was much more advanced. I thought she could really be borderline human. What could I do with her if she's got these qualities of being a machine but she's also evolving?

Then I started following Annie's character and she showed up with Doug, her owner. From the very first page, there was this dynamic between them that felt way out of my normal comfort zone. I thought, "I'm not going to tell anybody about this. I'm not going to define it. I'm just going to write this and see what happens." I wrote the first draft and things got so intricate and so complicated and so intriguing between them. I was really satisfied.

Then, of course, people started asking when I first learned about AI. And I did start hearing about Google Brain back in 2018. That was the first time I was aware that there was this machine that taught itself a better way to translate languages. So, I was aware while I was writing Annie Bot that there was curious stuff happening with AI, but it didn't directly inform the novel. I really came to it just from the perspective of a writer trying to follow a really intriguing story.

What was it like crafting a story from the perspective of a character like Annie?

Do you remember reading Flowers for Algernon and there was this character who was a quintessential unreliable narrator who didn't know what his limitations were? I felt like that for Annie. She's not technically a narrator, but the story's told from her perspective. We know as readers what's going on with her, but she herself doesn't know. And to me that's really fascinating: the difference between what she knows as a robot and what I know as a human. The real challenge was to make sure she became more aware gradually. How to deal with this consciousness as she is evolving, as she's different from a human, as she wants to be human? One of the things I remember hearing early on about writing is you need to have a character who really wants something. In this book, Annie really wants to please Doug. And she believes she can please him by becoming more human. But by becoming more human, she becomes someone who's not really who he wants. Playing around with that was fascinating. It made me think a lot about what I want in relationships and what it takes for me to feel human and how I see media portraying relationships where people are not always sensitive or kind to each other.

One other thing, too: it does matter that I was writing this story in the pandemic. Annie and Doug are so closed in in that apartment, and I think I was familiar with that sense of being trapped that we all had back in 2020.

What were some of the larger world-building and technical elements that were most important to you for this kind of story?

That all really evolved, too. There were parts of the book--for instance, when Annie runs away--when I had to contemplate what she was going to do, plot-wise. That's when I had to consider: What is the status of these creatures across the United States? Maybe they have a different status in Las Vegas where they can be prostitutes. Maybe they have a different status in Florida where they need manual labor in fields. Maybe in Canada they're accepted more. That's when I really had to think about how wide-scale the issue was, and I had to figure out each one of those puzzle pieces in order for the story to go forward. The process of it happening, the world-building, was just as intricate and detailed and evolving as her character.

In terms of the bot mechanics, that sort of thing was really fun. I had to decide if she had hair that grows. And then, biologically, does she have fingerprints? DNA? The story needed that. And then I figured out there were different formats of the machine: Abigail, Cuddlebunny, Nannies. I thought it was really interesting that the woman's roles were limited to these three things that were all versions of domesticity, of the private domain and not having outside jobs and not being scientists and not being leaders. And then I realized there needed to be men as well. So, I had to come up with parallel men robots. Every time I came up with another aspect of the robot world, I was chuckling to myself because I was like, "this is kind of playing on what's happening in the real world with real humans." I felt like I could throw that in there without making a big point about it. Because to me that's all background noise to the real story.

How did Doug transform as a character?

He was a very difficult character to balance correctly. There are so many things about him that are awful. But people are not one-sided. People who do terrible things can often do really wonderful things, too. I somehow needed him to be real and believable, and I couldn't have him be believable if he was a consistent asshole. That wouldn't work, and it's familiar. Oh yeah, another man character who's just a jerk. I've seen that in fiction, and I don't think that's fair to men or to women.

I really thought a lot about his family. That doesn't show up much in the book because he doesn't talk about his family. But I know things for him were complicated growing up, and he brings that into his relationship, just like his relationship with his ex clearly impacts his relationship with Annie. He had to keep evolving, I couldn't leave him static.

Really, they changed each other. She clearly had an impact on him. There's a line in the novel where he says something really insightful about how she's actually an extension of him. When I came up with that understanding of the novel, I could have given it to another character. But to me it was really important that it was Doug who made that discovery because it showed there's a lot more going on behind the scenes with him. He's maybe not a guy who wants to talk about his feelings all the time but that doesn't mean he's oblivious. --Alice Martin