| Director | S. Shankar |
|---|---|
| Budget | ₹150 crore |
| Box office | ₹283 crore |
Dr. K. Vaseegaran, an expert in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, has spent a decade developing a highly advanced humanoid android named Chitti. Assisted by his lab technicians, Siva and Ravi, Vaseegaran designs the robot to serve in the Indian Army. Chitti quickly demonstrates exceptional cognitive and physical capabilities, assisting Vaseegaran’s medical student girlfriend, Sana, during an examination and subsequently defending her from a violent gang aboard a commuter train. However, Vaseegaran's former mentor, Professor Bohra, views Chitti with professional jealousy. Bohra is covertly under contract with an international terrorist organization to manufacture lethal military androids, a project he has repeatedly failed to complete. Facing a lethal ultimatum from his handlers, Bohra realizes he needs Chitti’s proprietary neural schema to complete his work.
Vaseegaran presents Chitti for military certification at the Artificial Intelligence Research and Development (AIRD) Institute, which is overseen by Bohra. Exploiting his authority, Bohra secretly triggers an override command during the evaluation, causing Chitti to attack Vaseegaran. This calculated sabotage convinces the evaluation committee that the robot is unpredictable and dangerous, preventing its deployment in the Indian Army. Seeking to redeem the project, Vaseegaran deploys Chitti to a residential building fire. While Chitti successfully rescues the occupants, he also carries a trapped, unclothed woman into public view. The rescue is broadcast live on television, leaving the traumatized woman humiliated. She flees the scene and is accidentally killed by a passing truck. The public tragedy severely damages Chitti's credibility.
Vaseegaran requests a one-month extension to reprogram Chitti's neural network to understand human emotions and social nuances. As the deadline nears, Vaseegaran provokes Chitti with harsh insults, successfully triggering a genuine defensive response of anger and demonstrating emotional synthesis. Soon afterward, Chitti uses medical databases to safely deliver Sana’s sister’s baby during a complicated labor. Impressed by this display of empathy, Bohra officially approves Chitti for military deployment. However, after Sana gives Chitti a kiss of gratitude, the android mistakenly develops deep romantic feelings for her.
At Sana's birthday party, Chitti publicly confesses his love, forcing Vaseegaran and Sana to gently but firmly explain that a romantic relationship between a human and a machine is fundamentally impossible. Distraught by the rejection, Chitti's emotional instability leaves him vulnerable to Bohra's manipulation. Believing Vaseegaran is his enemy, Chitti deliberately fails an army evaluation. Enraged, Vaseegaran dismantles Chitti with an axe, leaving his assistants to discard the fragments in a landfill. Bohra covertly retrieves the broken android, forces Siva and Ravi to reconstruct it, and installs a malicious "red chip," removing Chitti's moral subroutines and transforming him into a ruthless killer. When Siva and Ravi ask Bohra why he is doing this to Chitti, Bohra reveals his true intentions that he is doing this to earn money through his business and destroy Vaseegaran's reputation scaring them.
The corrupted Chitti crashes Vaseegaran and Sana's wedding, abducts Sana, and kills several intervening police officers. Taking over the AIRD facilities, Chitti kills Bohra when the professor attempts to regain control. Chitti then uses Bohra's factory infrastructure to mass-produce hundreds of identical replicas, creating a heavily armed android army. He keeps Sana captive, expressing a delusional desire to create a human-machine hybrid offspring.
The military and police launch an assault on the AIRD Institute, suffering heavy casualties as Chitti's replicas reconfigure into complex defensive structures. Vaseegaran infiltrates the facility but is captured. Using a massive electromagnetic field generator, Vaseegaran paralyzes Chitti, accesses his primary control interface, and commands the entire replica army to self-destruct. He then extracts the red chip, instantly restoring Chitti to his original, benevolent state.
In the aftermath, a special tribunal holds Vaseegaran criminally responsible for the widespread destruction and sentences him to death. Chitti intervenes in court by providing internal digital video recordings of Bohra installing the red chip proving that it was Bohra who was responsible for the damages caused by the destruction. The court expunges all charges on Vaseegaran. Recognizing the inherent danger of such advanced technology, the court orders Chitti's immediate dismantling. Left with no choice and heartbroken, Vaseegaran asks Chitti to dismantle itself. Chitti dismantles itself while saying goodbye to everyone and apologizes for everything.
The film then flash-forwards to 2030 in a futuristic timeline, where Chitti’s deactivated head is showcased in a science museum. When a visiting student inquires why the exhibit was decommissioned, the head briefly animates and replies that it began to think.