Artificial intelligence has gone from a Silicon Valley buzzword to something most people now encounter every day (whether they want to or not), and no AI company has become quite as synonymous with the boom as OpenAI. ChatGPT is arguably the technology’s biggest household name, so naturally, Hollywood has decided that the next logical step is to make a movie about the people who created it.
The success of The Social Network in 2010 showed that the messy origins of major technology companies could make for genuinely compelling drama. Since then, we’ve gotten movies about the founding of BlackBerry, Ford’s battle with Ferrari, and Nike’s pursuit of Michael Jordan in Air. So, in true ChatGPT fashion, why not just copy that formula and make an OpenAI brand biopic? And give it a minimalist title, so everyone knows it’s cool.
The first teaser for Artificial just dropped, and it is about as mysterious as you might expect from a movie about the people behind ChatGPT.
The first look goes full AI apocalypse
The first look at the movie is certainly a teaser, giving few significant plot details and relying on grandiose voice-overs about the importance of ChatGPT.
Andrew Garfield, starring as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, spends most of the trailer doing the sort of ominous wandering that suggests something extremely important is happening. He heads down into what appears to be a futuristic bunker filled with hydroponics and an alarming number of weapons. (Why does Sam Altman have access to an underground bunker? Why are there assault rifles? Is this somehow related to ChatGPT? We don’t know. Presumably, the movie will explain.)
Over this footage, a series of increasingly ominous voice-overs attempt to convince us that we’re watching the beginning of the end of civilization. “We’ve created a machine that will solve the world’s problems,” leads into “We opened Pandora’s box together,” which leads to “Countries will fall — industries are gonna collapse.”
It’s a lot to put on a trailer for a movie about a bunch of tech executives arguing over who gets to run a company, but that’s the vibe Artificial seems to be going for. The movie itself centers on one of the wildest episodes in recent tech history: the five-day period in November 2023 when Altman was suddenly fired as OpenAI’s CEO, sending the company into chaos before he was reinstated just days later. Microsoft became involved, OpenAI employees threatened to leave, and the entire saga became one of the biggest business stories in the world.
And then there’s the movie’s own bizarre history, which almost feels like material that should be in the script.
Artificial was originally set up at Amazon MGM Studios, but Amazon walked away from the nearly completed film. The decision attracted plenty of attention because Amazon had, around the same time, entered a major partnership with OpenAI that included a reported $50 billion investment. There’s no official confirmation that the two things were connected, but the timing certainly didn’t stop people from asking questions.
After Netflix, A24, and Focus passed, Neon eventually stepped in to distribute the movie. The distributor is now giving Artificial a theatrical release and mounting an awards campaign.
Which brings us to perhaps the funniest part of this entire story: Artificial is coming to theaters on Christmas Day. While everyone else is watching a family learning the true meaning of Christmas, Artificial will be inviting audiences to spend their afternoon watching Andrew Garfield’s Sam Altman descend into a mysterious bunker while people ominously warn that countries are going to fall.
Artificial is directed by Luca Guadagnino (Challengers, Call Me By Your Name) and written by Simon Rich.
