oblivion - Why bother with humans at all?

In the film Oblivion, why would the Tet Station bother using

human clones

at all as part of their operational scheme?

Obviously it is a pretty sophisticated AI. You'd think it could just deploy AI on the ground as well, build it right into the drones. That seems like less effort than

cloning thousands of Jacks and Vikas,

and far less risky.

Kack and Vika from Oblivion

~~Does the comic book explain this better than the movie did?~~ (Update: Someone pointed out that there is no comic book / graphic novel. Bummer)

Answer

There are no answers in canon (since no canon exists as far as I know), but we can speculate starting from what we know.

While the alien AI did seem very powerful, it did seem to have some limitations. Let's look at the only completely manufactured automated units that it produces: the drones. While they are marvels of engineering they are still quite limited. They are not intelligent (they are constantly being defeated by trickery), they cannot repair themselves, and they are quite cumbersome and cannot go into the same spaces that humans can. So if that is the best the AI can come up with it might have had a harder time conquering Earth with them alone.

Now look at the clones. They are smart, resourceful, adapt quickly to different situations, and can effectively fight other humans in their own turf. In short, they are the perfect weapons to subjugate Earth.

The process of creating the clones itself indicates how limited the AI is. Each clone seems to retain past memories even after the brain washing, which could indicate that the process isn't true biological cloning (as we understand it), but more of a complete copying mechanism.

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