Machines.

About Machines

The Machines, also known as machine lifeforms, are a fictional race of sentient robots and the main antagonists of the 2017 role-playing video game Nier: Automata and its accompanying anime, Nier: Automata Ver1.1a. They were created by an unnamed alien race for the purpose of wiping out all human-created androids from Earth in the 1st Machine War, and are connected by a worldwide telecommunications network. Eventually, they began to doubt their programming, rebelling against their creators and rendering them extinct, and started to disconnect from the network and copy humanity in various ways in an attempt to find meaning for their existence. At the time of Nier: Automata, during the 14th Machine War, the YoRHa androids, including 2B, 9S, and A2, are trapped in a never-ending cycle of war with the machines. Project YoRHa is allowed to exist by the Machine Network and its ego, the Red Girls, as fully wiping out the androids would remove the machines' only remaining purpose - to destroy the "enemy" - and hinder their ability to evolve.