One of the best animated films of the decade.

There has been a lot of talk about animation being taken over by AI, which is also threatening to take over other things. The people who are developing those machines don’t seem to grasp the hard work and heart that’s committed into animation, whether the movie/show is good or bad.

The new Dreamworks Animation feature “The Wild Robot” is proof that it doesn’t need soulless machines to tell a story. It needs people with computers and skills to represent something valuable, and it allows them to make a distinction between machines and nature. Director Chris Sanders (“Lilo & Stitch,” “How to Train Your Dragon”) took the animation’s inspiration from the works of classic Disney and Hayao Miyazaki (who deserved his second Oscar win for “The Boy and the Heron”), and it all looks and feels beautiful and delightful.

The story, based on Peter Brown’s book, takes place in the future when the world has been flooded (there’s a haunting sequence of the Golden Gate Bridge underwater), and people are now living on higher ground with futuristic homes and robots dedicated to helping them with their tasks. Are they supposed to have feelings? No, just tasks to follow and stickers to give to potential customers. These machines are called ROZZUM robots, whose slogans are “A ROZZUM always completes its task, just ask.”

One of its units survives a shipwreck and wakes up on an island that’s only inhabited by animals, who either steal her parts, run away from her, or have their savage ways of protesting against her stickers. Lupita Nyong’o voices this robot, ROZZUM Unit 7134, but we should just call her Roz for the rest of the movie and this review.

She programs herself to understand the animal language of all species, which is why we also get voices from the likes of Pedro Pascal as a wise-cracking fox named Fink, Catherine O’Hara as a mother opossum, Mark Hamill as a grizzly bear, Ving Rhames as a falcon, Matt Berry as a beaver, and Bill Nighy as an old goose.

She accidentally kills a goose family, but manages to save a gosling, who hatches and imprints her as his mother and is the runt of the litter. Using some help from the fox, she names the chick Brightbill (voiced by Kit Connor) and has until Fall to teach him to fly. And does this youngling follow certain movie cliches? Yes, he does, but they come and go, and therefore, the cynicism is overpowered.

Think of movies like “The Iron Giant,” “Wall-E,” “Princess Mononoke,” and “Fly Away Home.” And think about how “The Wild Robot” knows about nature and animals, while adding a robot who learns the meaning of compassion and love. There’s something about it that’s unique within the genre.

The humor here is also very funny and honest with a spark that both kids and adults can relate to. The mother opossum wouldn’t mind if one of her kids got eaten, the robot doesn’t know how to make up stories, and the fox has a big appetite for steamed clams.

It’s sad to know that at this point, Roz is the only robot to acknowledge the balance of nature, especially when her distress signal attracts the attention of a squid-like robot (voiced by Stephanie Hsu), who is eager to share her memory card. I can assume she’s going to share with her company that the island is a potential place to develop new homes. But we don’t want that. Nyong’o is brilliant in the ways she shifts her tone in her robot voice, which is balanced by energy and patience. And under Sanders’ direction and screenplay, the movie is a gem.

The last few Dreamworks Animation entries were “Ruby Gilman: Teenage Kraken,” “Trolls Band Together,” and “Kung Fu Panda 4,” which didn’t live up to the hype. But “The Wild Robot” has the right programming to do so. Why can’t all AI products be more like Roz?