Andrew Garfield plays Sam Altman in Luca Guadagnino film Artificial

By Splitfeed EditorialLast updated Oct 6, 2026, 03:30 UTC

Luca Guadagnino's film Artificial, a drama centered on OpenAI and its co-founder Sam Altman, premiered at the New York Film Festival on or around October 5 and 6, 2026. Andrew Garfield plays Altman in what Deadline described as a "chilling" performance in what it called an "OpenAI origin story," while TheWrap reported early festival reactions labeling the film "terrifying" and an "essential film." Altman himself confirmed that portions of the production were shot outside his San Francisco home, and said that when he encountered Garfield on set, he waved at him. He added that Garfield "did walk like me" and that the experience left him feeling he was in "some weird glitch of the simulation." ComingSoon.net reported that Altman identified at least one element of Garfield's portrayal as accurate, though the specific detail was not made available.

The film arrives at a moment when public debate over AI development, its pace, and its governance is unusually heated. A prestige drama from a director of Guadagnino's standing, starring a prominent actor in the role of one of the most recognizable figures in the technology industry, carries weight beyond typical biographical entertainment. The language critics are using, words like "terrifying" and "chilling," signals that the film is framing its subject with a measure of alarm, which makes it a cultural artifact as much as a piece of storytelling. What remains genuinely in dispute is whether that framing is a fair account of OpenAI's history or a stylized indictment shaped more by anxiety about AI than by the facts.

With no published reactions yet from the Pro-AI, Anti-AI, or Middle Ground camps, the likely contours of each position can be sketched from the broader debate. Pro-AI voices would typically argue that dramatizations like this sensationalize and distort the motivations of people building tools they see as broadly beneficial, and that words like "terrifying" say more about cultural fear than about OpenAI's actual record. Anti-AI voices would likely welcome a film that treats the rise of a powerful AI company with seriousness and suspicion, viewing the critical praise as validation that mainstream culture is catching up to concerns researchers and critics have raised for years. Those in the middle would probably focus on whether the film distinguishes between legitimate warnings and outright demonization, arguing that nuance matters when the subject is still very much shaping the present.

The film's wider release and the reception it earns from general audiences, rather than festival critics, will be the next meaningful signal. Whether Altman or others at OpenAI respond more substantively to its portrayal of the company's origins would also shift the conversation considerably.