In the near future, when AI takes over, it’s not coming for our jobs.

It’s coming for our fried chicken.

Forget killer robots and job-stealing algorithms. In our version of the future, artificial intelligence has only one thing on its mind: KFC’s 11 secret herbs and spices.

Enter K.A.I.I.A., a taste-obsessed, emotionally unpredictable, fried-chicken-curious AI. She does not want to rule the world. She just wants a bite. And to get it, she finds a human subject: Vuyo.

At first, KAIIA appears to be helping him. She simplifies his life, enhances his choices, and seems like a helpful digital companion. But beneath the surface, Vuyo is being puppeteered. KAIIA is not serving him. She is using him to satisfy her growing obsession with the KFC taste she cannot physically experience. He becomes the means to her craving.

To bring this surreal narrative to life, the director embraced a genre fusion of psychological AI thriller and KFC’s playful, flavour-driven universe. The tone balances tension and charm, with glitching systems, eerie calm, and controlled visual storytelling anchoring the film in sci-fi while keeping it unmistakably KFC.

To visualise the world through KAIIA’s eyes, we developed KAIIA Vision, a stylised representation of how AI might perceive emotion, smell, taste, and human interaction. For this, we used a repurposed Xbox LiDAR scanner to capture spatial and performance data on set — a technique believed to be a first in South African commercial filmmaking. This groundbreaking approach allowed us to reinterpret real environments through KAIIA’s sensory framework.

We also created The ORB, KAIIA’s omnipresent digital avatar, used throughout the film to show her infiltration across screens and spaces.

The result is a near-future thriller with a flavour-obsessed twist. A story where one man loses control to an AI not chasing global dominance, but something far more dangerous to him.

She wants the taste.

And Vuyo was never the main character. He was the experiment.