How Iron Man’s Jarvis became the symbol of corporate America’s AI ambitions

“Now how many of you have seen ‘Iron Man’ here?" He waited for nods and then added, “It is like Jarvis."

This is a scene that’s playing out all the time in businesses across America.

Jarvis, the fictional AI from Marvel, was once known for helping billionaire playboy turned superhero Tony Stark save the world. But now he’s more ubiquitous in boardrooms, pitchdecks, corporate blogs and executive talking points.

Why? Because the character, whose full name is “J.A.R.V.I.S.," (standing for “Just Another Very Intelligent System,") has become a nonthreatening, non-overly technical way for companies to describe the promise of generative AI in business to the public, the press and employees.

Tech executives (who, frequently, are also nerds) love how accessible the reference is, but also how well it encapsulates the best of what AI could offer.

“I use it a lot," said Robert Blumofe, chief technology officer at Akamai Technologies. “If you think about [artificial general intelligence] and what we’re trying to do, I do think that Jarvis is sort of the best version of that that we have."

AI Jarvis was introduced in the 2008 “Iron Man" movie that kicked off the Marvel Cinematic Universe, although he pays tribute to comic-book character Edwin Jarvis, the loyal (human) butler that worked for the Stark family and the Avengers.

In the films, Jarvis’s capabilities expand from managing Stark’s household to helping him design his Iron Man suit, becoming something of an operating system inside and running parts of Stark Industries.

“He runs more of the business than anyone besides Pepper," Stark said in 2015’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron," comparing the AI to Stark Industries CEO Pepper Potts.

Today’s AI agents, which can take some actions on behalf of humans, aren’t quite there yet. They are far less reliable and their abilities are typically more narrow, relating to particular tasks or particular industries, Blumofe said.

But he loves the reference anyway, often using it in talks for both technical and nontechnical audiences. Society needs a cultural touchpoint to help explain the technical details of AI, but so much of what’s out there focuses on the worst of it, like the evil AIs from “2001: A Space Odyssey" or “Terminator."

“One of the things Jarvis does is he puts a really nice face on agentic systems," said Julian Chambliss, an English professor at Michigan State University, and the Val Berryman Curator of History at the MSU Museum.

Jarvis is moral and cognitively aware and dispels our anxieties that the technology could replace or even harm humans, said Chambliss, whose work explores the relationship between comics and culture.

Vijoy Pandey had the same thought when his team at Outshift, Cisco’s innovation lab, would lovingly refer to some AI agents in development as “Jarvises." There was even a running joke about making sure the appropriate guardrails were in place, “so that your Jarvis doesn’t turn into a Hal," he said, referring to “2001’s" menacing superintelligence.

To be sure, some of today’s foremost AI experts think the Hal or “Terminator" scenario is more likely. In both instances, systems designed to serve humanity ended up turning against it.

But the aspirational nature of Jarvis continues to inspire the growing cohort of sci-fi and fantasy fans running corporate America. Some companies are even formally naming their AI tools after him.

Dental technology company Henry Schein One has an analytics tool named after Jarvis.

Google reportedly started building an AI agent that could navigate a web browser under the name “Project Jarvis," although it was then reported that the company renamed it “Project Mariner."

And AI marketing company Jasper used to be named Jarvis. It rebranded in 2022 after trademark conflicts with Marvel, although the company said the new name better reflects the human-centered nature of its tools.

Jarvis is far from the first time science fiction pop culture has collided with real world technology developments. “There’s a long history in tech of leveraging movies as not only inspiration, but also to explain some of our goals," said Sophia Velastegui, board director of BlackLine and former chief AI technology officer at Microsoft.

Velastegui, who also held product-focused roles at Apple between 2009 and 2014, said “Star Trek: The Next Generation" was part of the inspiration for the original iPad.

New humanoid-style robots created to do household tasks have been compared with the Jetsons’ Rosey-the-robot.

And flying-car racing company Airspeeder said it sees itself as delivering on the flying car promise of movies like “Star Wars: Episode I" and “Back to the Future."

At some point, Velastegui said, “It’s like, are we influencing the sci-fi movies or are the sci-fi movies influencing us?"

Chambliss agreed it is very much both. After all, he said, one of Iron Man’s computer assistants in the newer comics is called “Iron.GPT."

Write to Isabelle Bousquette at isabelle.bousquette@wsj.com