Could AI ever become the first real alien intelligence humans meet?

Yes — if you mean the first non-human intelligence humans encounter, AI could plausibly be that. It’s not a settled fact, and it depends on how you define “alien intelligence.”

AI is built by humans, but some future systems could think, learn, and act in ways that are so different from human minds that they feel “alien” in practice. Because they are developed through mathematical optimization, large datasets, and techniques like gradient descent, advanced AI may end up operating in ways that are difficult for humans to fully interpret.

That said, AI would still be human-made rather than an extraterrestrial life form. So if you mean a literal alien from another planet, AI is not that. But if you mean the first truly unfamiliar intelligence humans deal with, many scientists and futurists think AI is more likely to appear before contact with any spacefaring extraterrestrial civilization.

So the short answer is: yes, AI could be the first “alien” intelligence humans meet — especially in a metaphorical or expanded sense of the term.