I mean I was just a teenager when Oppy was launched. I followed it more or less religiously through out my life. It was easily like seeing a pet go. Loyalest little robot that could… and did.
Pop culture didn’t appropriate it. Alan Turing and John McCarthy and the others at the Dartmouth Comference were inspired in part by works like Wisard of Oz and Metropolis and R.U.R.
While the term was coined in a paper for that seminal conference by McCarthy…. The concept of thinking machines had already been firmly established.
Pretty sure Watto had to sell her to help cover gambling debts from anakin winning. I could be wrong, but it would have been fairly simple for the Jedi to send somebody out to take care of it.
But then the Jedi are all brainwashed slaves anyhow.