Luca Guadagnino's Film 'Artificial' Debuts at NYFF After Amazon Passes
The biopic about OpenAI's origins, starring Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman, premiered at the New York Film Festival and will be released by Neon on Christmas Day.
Luca Guadagnino's drama Artificial, which dramatizes the founding of OpenAI and the roles of Sam Altman and Ilya Sutskever, premiered Monday at the New York Film Festival. The film, produced by Amazon MGM Studios, was not released by Amazon, which opted to shop the finished picture to other distributors. Indie label Neon acquired the rights and scheduled a theatrical release for December 25.
The story follows the early 2000s research of Ilya Sutskever, his mentorship by Geoffrey Hinton, and his later partnership with Altman, Elon Musk and other investors that led to the creation of ChatGPT. The screenplay, written by Simon Rich, presents the narrative as a linear biopic, highlighting key moments such as a model glitch that caused the AI to generate false answers and the shift of OpenAI from a nonprofit to a for-profit venture after Microsoft’s investment.
Andrew Garfield portrays Altman, while Yura Borisov plays a young Sutskever. Supporting roles include Monica Barbaro as CTO Mira Murati, Cooper Hoffman as president Greg Brockman, and a voice cameo by Mark Rylance as a cautionary figure. The film’s cinematography is by Malik Hassan and the score is composed by Damon Albarn.
Artificial arrives amid heightened public debate over artificial-intelligence safety, following recent testimonies from AI researchers warning of existential risks. The movie’s release coincides with statements from OpenAI executives acknowledging the potential dangers of unchecked AI development.