Curiosity and fear powered actor Andrew Garfield’s performance in Luca Guadagnino’s OpenAI movie “Artificial”, which premiered at the London Film Festival on Sunday.
OpenAI did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. The film also stars Ike Barinholtz as Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Monica Barbaro plays Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former technology chief.
Garfield plays OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in the film, which unfolds over two decades and chronicles the conception and growth of the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT and Altman’s dramatic firing and rehiring in 2023. It was shot in 2025 and comes at a time of mounting concerns triggered by recent incidents at OpenAI and Anthropic that have sparked fears rogue AI systems may slip beyond human control.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Altman said he was not expecting an “accurate depiction”. With a screenplay by Emmy-winning “Saturday Night Live” writer Simon Rich, “Artificial” stars Russian Oscar-nominee Yura Borisov as OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who left the company after his involvement in Altman’s brief ouster. It follows the ethical differences and conflict over AI safety between Altman and Sutskever, who trained under Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI”, portrayed in the film by Mark Rylance.
