Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial explores the story of OpenAI and the creation of ChatGPT, highlighting the carelessness and greed of its founders. The film shows how the men behind the formation of OpenAI discard their used smoothie cups, while cleaning staff are seen wiping down surfaces or washing windows in the background of a shot, emphasizing the class divide between the tech founders and their employees. The camera sees the cleaning staff, but their employers do not.
The Concept of AGI
The film breaks down the basics of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), emphasizing the way that large language models are both hallucinating incorrect responses to questions while also learning on their own how to evolve and improve. One key sequence involves the OpenAI employees celebrating an AI model that can beat a human while playing a video game, without being instructed on how to win. This victory for the technology raises questions about its impact on humanity.
The Cast and Characters
Andrew Garfield is first billed, but the movie’s true star is Yura Borisov, who proves that his Oscar-nominated work in 2024’s Anora wasn’t a fluke. Ilya Sutskever, perhaps the brightest genius amongst OpenAI’s co-founders, is the most true of believers in AGI’s capacity for good, a quality highlighted by Borisov’s powerful yet understated performance. Meanwhile, Ike Barinholtz plays Elon Musk with all the subtlety of an SNL ten-to-one sketch.
The Music and Tone
The film’s soundtrack, created by Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz fame, invokes a bit of a sci-fi feel, but sometimes clashes tonally with the action or overwhelms it. The movie’s tone is not subtle, and it hits all the usual bullet points of the narrative, as very smart individuals come up with a great idea, launch it with idealism in their hearts, and then get surprised when humanity’s greed corrupts it.
The Reflection of Reality
The movie doesn’t touch on the lawsuits over AGI models being trained on stolen copyrighted material or the increasing controversy over data centers. However, it does mention the way AGI absorbs resources and potentially becoming self-aware enough to compete with humans for them. The film’s message is clear: the people who developed what would become ChatGPT did so without proper guardrails for the technology, making a whole lot of money without considering the impact they would have on the world.
In conclusion, Artificial is a film that explores the story of OpenAI and the creation of ChatGPT, highlighting the carelessness and greed of its founders. With a talented cast, including Yura Borisov and Andrew Garfield, the film raises important questions about the impact of technology on humanity. Artificial premiered at the New York Film Festival and arrives in theaters on December 25th, 2026.
Pixel P. Snarkbyte, widely regarded as the “Shakespeare of Sh*tposts,” is a video game expert with a unique knack for turning pixels into punchlines.
Born in the small town of Respawn, Pennsylvania, Pixel grew up mashing buttons on an ancient NES controller, firmly believing that “blowing into the cartridge” was a sacred ritual passed down through generations.
Pixel P. Snarkbyte: proving that life, much like a buggy open-world game, is better with a little lag-induced chaos.
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