Humanity Counters Robot Overload at SXSW 2026

Robots were everywhere at South by Southwest 2026, from the Waymo self-driving taxis slowly rolling through traffic to little scooter ‘bots delivering items to actual humanoid robots like the one from Tesla that looks like he (sorry, it) wants to perform a DJ set at Coachella.

The Austin festival and conference – which combines music showcases, a film and TV festival, panels and lots of “innovation” tech demos and activations – was infused with a lot of robots too, with buzzed-about documentaries about AI and robots and lots of panels with talk about algorithms and autonomous AI agents.

But, either by design or serendipity, there was also a refreshing amount of humanity in the movies, TV premieres, and entertainment-related panels I was able to catch. It was almost as if the creative work I saw doubled down on the kind of lived-in, unexpectedly intimate stories that an AI model couldn’t replicate (at least not yet). Here’s a wrapup of some of the highlights (and a few not-so-highlights) I caught at South by Southwest:

SXSW’s big premieres kicked off with the Boots Riley comedy I Love Boosters, an absurdist fashion industry takedown from the auteur behind Sorry to Bother You and the blink-and-you-missed-it TV show I’m a Virgo. The SXSW audience ate up the movie, which is about a gang of shoplifters led by Keke Palmer (the “Boosters” of the title) who resell expensive clothes and end up in a feud with a famous designer (Demi Moore, still on her victory lap after The Substance). Critics seem to adore it; I found Boosters visually inventive, but overstuffed and messy with increasingly unnecessary plot turns that bury the movie’s anti-industrialism message. A lot of third-act silliness and a rough sound mix at the premiere that made dialogue hard to understand didn’t help.

On the other hand, Power Ballad, the latest from John Carney (Once, Sing Street) proved a charming comedy with a career-best performance from Paul Rudd as a wedding singer living in Ireland who meets a pop star (Nick Jonas) for a life-changing night of songwriting. Funny, but super heartfelt, the modest vibe of the movie packs a surprisingly strong emotional punch that left much of the theater in happy tears by the end.

There’s nothing modest about Obsession, a relentlessly tense thrill ride of a horror movie about the consequences of getting exactly what you wish for. Director Curry Barker’s dark love story overdelivers with a creepy lead performance from Inde Navarrette. The audience I saw it with screamed and laughed in equal measures at the movie’s razor-sharp tone shifts.

DreamQuil, which had its world premiere at SXSW, was written during the pandemic by sisters Vanessa and Alex Prager, and directed by the latter. And it feels like that: claustrophobic and locked down with a deep sense of dread. Director Prager leavens this with a retro-future aesthetic that includes miniatures, bright colors, and some welcome bits of levity including Juliette Lewis as a surgeon. The movie has a lot of existential thoughts about what being human, being a family, and being happy means in a world where you  can be replaced by robots, too many to comfortably gel with the movie’s shifting tone. It’s not sure if it wants to be a pointed drama, a satire or both and it takes a while to find its groove. Elizabeth Banks is excellent as an unhappy mother as well as a lifelike robot who comes to take her place when she seeks a mental vacation and the oft-underrated John C. Reilly does a nice job anchoring the film as her adoring husband. DreamQuil’s timing couldn’t be better.

On the TV side, Apple’s got another winner on the way: Margo’s Got Money Troubles, an adaptation of the Rufi Thorpe novel, debuts in mid April and judging from the first few episodes shown at SXSW, it should resonate with anyone’s who’s got a complicated relationship with their parents or their baby daddy. The title character (Elle Fanning) gets pregnant and finds her entire life changing, including her relationship with her mother (Michelle Pfeiffer, absolutely killer in this role), and her mostly absent father, played by Nick Offerman. Written by TV vet and Mr. Michelle Pfeiffer, David E. Kelley, the pilot starts off a little wobbly, but finds its feet quickly. By the second very funny and brilliantly acted episode, I was desperate for access to binge the whole season. It hits Apple TV Plus on April 15.

You’ll have to wait a little longer for Larry David’s follow-up to Curb Your Enthusiasm. His new HBO sketch show Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, arrives on June 26. David spoke about the new show with his creative partner Jeff Schaffer and, true to form, didn’t commit to continuing the show beyond its seven-episode run. The two previewed a very funny sketch that takes place on V-Jay Day and finds David playing a guy on the street trying to get a kiss. It does not go well, of course. The show will find the comedian inserted into different points of American history and will include guest stars such as Bill Hader, Susie Essman, and Barack Obama, a golfing buddy of David’s. David said he and Obama relentlessly teased each other on the set of the show. “I’m president here,” David reportedly told the former president.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from a panel featuring some of the creative talent behind Apple TV’s Pluribus, including Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn, but if you were looking for some spoilers for Season Two or insights into how the show came to be, there wasn’t much you wouldn’t have already learned from the show’s excellent behind-the-scenes podcast or interviews with Gilligan and Seehorn. Instead, the panel covered what it was like for the team to transition from Gilligan’s last show, Better Call Saul, to a sci-fi mystery box show driven by Seehorn’s tremendous lead performance. It was a good vibes panel: who doesn’t love Gilligan’s success story? But it didn’t offer much new perspective on the show or streaming TV.

A panel with filmmaker Steven Spielberg proved more revealing as the director behind the upcoming Disclosure Day revealed he hasn’t been contacted by aliens (but desperately wants to be) and that he has not used AI in any of his work, at least not yet, but isn’t absolutely opposed to the technology. “I am not for AI if it replaces a creative individual,” he said. That panel was actually a recorded interview for The Big Picture, a podcast representing a still-growing medium. A few days later at Austin’s ACL Live at the Moody Center theater, I Heart Radio would host a podcasting awards show with appearances from Will Ferrell, Eric Andre and (via video message) Amy Poehler and Terry Gross.

Even on the podcast front, presenters and award winners touted the intimacy that podcasts bring to connect hosts and listeners. Thus far, there haven’t been any winners of the podcast award that used anything other than human voices for their shows.