For those wondering when artificial intelligence will truly take root, here’s a bulletin: it already has.

The “A.I.” movie might awaken venture capitalists to the commercial potential of research projects in controversial areas like the emotional dimensions of machine intelligence. The film asks what would become of a childlike robot programmed to love a human mother. Researchers said “A.I.” could build support for today’s more mundane goals of using programmed emotional capabilities to make Web sites, tutorial software and products like cars more responsive and engaging.

Veterans of the long push to expand and commercialize machine intelligence say that efforts to market it have often been confounded by the tendency of experts continually to raise the threshold of what they consider true artificial intelligence.

Raymond Kurzweil, a researcher and entrepreneur whose involvement began when he was a teenager in the 1960’s, said, “Once a technique works, it’s no longer considered A.I.”