The movie Artificial premiered at the London Film Festival on 11 October, featuring Andrew Garfield as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The production chronicles the development of OpenAI over two decades, including the 2023 incident where Altman was fired and subsequently rehired.
Simon Rich wrote the screenplay for the film, which was shot in 2025. Yura Borisov portrays Ilya Sutskever, who departed OpenAI following his role in the brief removal of Altman.
The narrative focuses on ethical disagreements and safety conflicts between Altman and Sutskever regarding artificial intelligence. Mark Rylance portrays Geoffrey Hinton, often called the "Godfather of AI", while Ike Barinholtz plays Elon Musk.
Monica Barbaro portrays Mira Murati and noted, "It's so fascinating making a film like this when the topic is so relevant right now." Garfield did not meet or contact Altman to prepare for the role, stating, "I think the reason I was drawn to it was just pure curiosity and fear and really trying to understand as deeply as possible the people who are ushering us into this next phase of the world."
Barbaro described the experience of filming as daunting because "the truth seems to change every month" while watching the real-life figures argue on Twitter. OpenAI did not provide a comment in response to a request from Reuters.
