Artificial review arrives the same week a glossy magazine coronated Sam Altman in an expansive profile, casting him as a figure steering humanity toward an AI-defined future and quoting him saying society should accept “bad things” in exchange for artificial intelligence’s potential. That backdrop hangs over Luca Guadagnino’s film, which premiered at the New York Film Festival and trains its sights on Altman and OpenAI with a brash, skeptical eye.
The film posits a world already rattled by AI’s excesses, citing rogue agents, breaches of government and international systems, and anxieties about so-called cognitive surrender. Within that climate, Artificial advances a blunt thesis: Altman is portrayed as a calculating operator, a stance that may help explain why a major studio reportedly exited distribution in June amid its corporate ties to OpenAI. The result plays more like an opinionated broadside than a probing character study, offering limited insight into the tech elite or the culture that celebrates them.
Artificial review: origins and early ambitions
The story begins in 2003 with a young Ilya Sutskever, played with nervy intensity by Yura Borisov, seeking mentorship from Professor Geoff Hinton, portrayed with serene gravity by Mark Rylance. Their exchanges nod to patient, incremental science, even as the film winks at the audience about what is to come.
By 2012, their research is distinguishing cats from dogs, a benchmark moment that leaves Sutskever impatient with Hinton’s cautious trajectory. Enter Elon Musk, portrayed by Ike Barinholtz, who introduces Sutskever to Sam Altman, played by Andrew Garfield and newly flush after selling the location-sharing app Loopt for $40 million.
The burgeoning circle is depicted as socially awkward but ascendant, trading crude jokes over high-end dinners while investors spin grand promises about AI reversing climate change and curing disease. Sutskever, rapt with zeal, imagines technology ending pain and isolation, while the score leans into knowingly ominous cues.
Artificial review: power, friction, and a fall-and-rise
The film’s core tension pits Sutskever’s fervent optimism against Altman’s self-serving drive. As OpenAI’s systems surpass humans at games and grow more formidable, the duo’s partnership frays. Garfield leans into a slick, unnerving turn, tracking Altman from eager disruptor to embattled executive, culminating in the well-known sequence of his ouster from OpenAI and swift return. “They’re being very mean to me,” he says after board concerns about ethics, a line that distills the character’s brittle victimhood.
Artificial is Guadagnino’s most overtly comic film, from a script by essayist and television writer Simon Rich. The humor often skews broad. Barinholtz’s Musk reads like an exaggerated sketch, and Garfield’s effete shading of Altman may feel off-key. Yet the dialogue can cut sharply. In one scene, after safety questions from colleague Mira Murati, portrayed by Monica Barbaro, Altman fires back, “I didn’t invent teen suicide, Mira.”
Artificial review: heavy-handed flourishes and a crowded zeitgeist
The production packages its critique with eye-catching but obvious images, including a passerby in VR goggles and a simulation-style sprint across a fog-wrapped Golden Gate Bridge. Damon Albarn provides the score, including an original song whose on-the-nose lyrics underline the film’s moral bluntness.
Artificial arrives amid a spate of tech-mogul dramas centered on figures like Elon Musk, Elizabeth Holmes, and Mark Zuckerberg, as filmmakers race to capture an unsettled moment. In a late monologue, Altman declares, “We opened Pandora’s box. Countries will fall, industries will collapse, and we get to be the ones to usher people into this new world.”
That dire forecast gets muddled by the film’s tonal whiplash. Despite chilling beats and a commanding performance from Borisov, the satire lands as scattershot, more satisfied with its scolding than with unpacking the complexities it invokes. Artificial ultimately sketches a cautionary portrait, but its mirror to the present feels more fogged than clarifying. For another recent screen portrait that blends media spectacle and moral unease, read our You Can See Everything review.