In the New Toy Story Movie, Toys Lose Their Jobs to AI

The tech backlash is now mainstream—so even tech companies are joining in

In December, I suggested that the “tech backlash might just be the biggest issue of 2026.” We’re only a few weeks into the year, but everywhere I see confirmation of this forecast.

Tech is the new kale—peddled everywhere, but about as appetizing as your lawn after it’s been fertilized.

Let’s look at what’s happening right now, with tech is taking body blows at every turn. I’ll start with movies—where an entire industry appears on the brink of getting replaced up by AI tech.

Toy Story 5 (coming in June) will promote an anti-tech message. It tells how abandoned toys respond to eight-year-old Bonnie’s new plaything, an AI-enabled smart tablet named Lilypad. Like redundant Amazon workers, the old toys fear that their time has come and gone.

“Extinction?” frets the toy dinosaur. “Not again!”

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This storyline would be noteworthy under any circumstances, but especially because Toy Story 5 is coming from Pixar, the studio that unleashed digital tech on cinema audiences with the first Toy Story movie in 1995.

Yes, the backlash against tech is so widespread now that even tech companies are joining in.

Check out the trailer, which aptly captures the mood of the current moment. Many of us feel just like those abandoned toys.

It’s all there—screentime addiction, the replacement of friends with devices, the phony sycophancy of bots.