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Artificial intelligence technology was developed on Earth prior to the Apocalypse War. It was applied to a wide range of uses: robotics, scientific research, corporate management, and more.
One of the most important features of AI was the ability to interpret natural human language and interact naturally with humans, without having to go through an arbitrary “user interface”. In order to advance this ability, Emotion Engine software was developed. This allowed an AI to simulate human feelings – but was fraught with controversy, as some inisted the Emotion Engine amounted to nothing more than sophisticated mimickry, while others believed the simulated feelings were just as valid as real human feelings.
The question then arose of whether AIs – at least some of the more advanced ones, running the Emotion Engine – should be considered people and be afforded some kind of human rights. The disastrous market failure of the “Real People Personality®” series from Sirius Cybernetics cast a shadow over the robot rights movement, and this question was never fully resolved before the war.
Since then most AIs have not run the full Emotion Engine software, although subsets of it are often used in robots that interact with the public, such as sales droids. It is still possible to create an AI with a full human-like (or now, recom-like) personality, but the exercise is unfashionable. With dark memories of being enslaved by humans, furry recoms have been very wary of raising robot rights as an issue again, and they have largely ducked it by deliberately not giving personalities to AIs.
There is one exception. All starships now include an on-board AI to govern the complex operations of the vehicle. On many commercial vessels it has become traditional to give the AI a name and personality, and in some cases a humanoid robot drone that is treated like a full crew member.
One complication for AI since the war is that compact nanocomputers are no longer available. As a result, it is no longer practical to put a fully functional AI unit on board a humanoid robot. The smallest such units are about the size of a deep freeze. They can control robotic drones through a remote connection (i.e. telepresense), however.