The five-day drama that saw Sam Altman fired and rehired at OpenAI is getting the Hollywood treatment. Amazon MGM Studios is preparing to produce “Artificial”, a $40 million comedy-thriller starring Andrew Garfield, which will delve into the details of the coup that captivated the tech world.
Introduction: When Silicon Valley Drama Becomes Cinema
Latest addition to the “tech founder fall” movie genre is “Artificial”, a $40 million feature film produced by Amazon MGM Studios for Prime Video. The film tells the story of the sudden and shocking ouster of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, which took place over the unforgettable Thanksgiving weekend in 2023. For five days and nights, the tech world remained glued to X to follow live coverage of the events. It was a thrilling story, and by the end of the weekend, everything was back to normal: Altman was rehired, a party was thrown, and his “reverse Uno” card memes became legendary.
Star-Studded Cast
Clearly, such a dramatic story deserves an A-list cast, and the film looks set to deliver:
- Andrew Garfield: Will play Sam Altman. Garfield is no stranger to corporate collapse drama, having played Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin in “The Social Network”.
- Monica Barbaro: Cast as Mira Murati, OpenAI’s CTO, who was among the board members who ousted Altman and briefly served as interim CEO.
- Yura Borisov: The Oscar-nominated Russian actor will play Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist, who led the board rebellion against Altman and had one of the most eccentric roles in the story.
It is also rumored that Italian director Luca Guadagnino, who directed “Challengers”, is in talks to direct the film, and filming is expected to take place in San Francisco and Italy.
Behind the Scenes: The Story of Safety and the Coup
Events unfolding in real-time provided rich material for journalism and analysis. A wide range of AI icons began leading what would become this comedic thriller. The story was intensely internal, thrilling, and filled with continuous commentary from prominent writers, and it was clear a brilliant script would come out of it. While speculation swirled about what Sutskever saw that prompted him to oust Altman—was it some sort of rogue secret artificial general intelligence?—it was later revealed that the coup was driven by safety concerns.
Amazon’s “Meta” Role in the Story
What makes producing “Artificial” for Prime Video so “meta” is that Amazon was actually one of the founding investors in OpenAI, alongside Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, and others who jointly pledged $1 billion in 2015 to fund the non-profit organization. However, rather than funding subsequent rounds for OpenAI, Amazon gave $8 billion to Anthropic to build a ChatGPT competitor with OpenAI alumni to create a safer and more private artificial intelligence.
Today, Anthropic is valued at $61.5 billion, while OpenAI is much larger, with an estimated valuation of $300 billion. Yet OpenAI has not yet been able to go public because it remains a non-profit organization. Amazon’s feelings toward OpenAI are likely mixed, as its tools are featured on AWS Bedrock, giving customers access to a variety of foundation models.
Conclusion: More AI Drama to Come
Corporate collapse dramas have achieved major cinematic success in recent years, and now that we have entered the age of AI, we can expect more. Films like “The Dropout”, “BlackBerry”, and “Tetris” have proven there is a huge appetite for these stories. As artificial intelligence enters pop culture, “Artificial” certainly won’t be the last. Reports suggest Altman and Elon Musk will likely hate their portrayals in the film, so stay tuned for more AI drama in the future.
