‘Artificial’ Draws Early Reviews

What happened

Luca Guadagnino’s film Artificial premiered at the New York Film Festival ahead of a Dec. 25 theatrical opening. Amazon MGM Studios dropped the completed film in June, saying another distributor would better serve it and that the studio would help find a new home. Neon acquired Artificial for worldwide distribution 11 days later. The film dramatizes the rise of OpenAI, focusing on Sam Altman and co-founder Ilya Sutskever, including Altman’s firing as CEO and reinstatement days later. Actor Andrew Garfield said he studied footage of Altman for months. Altman said he had not seen the film and warned it would not accurately depict him. Early reviews were broadly positive.

How each side covered it

From the left

Left-leaning outlets cast Artificial as a warning about reckless AI power, not a neutral tech-world portrait. The Guardian framed Altman as an amoral manipulator and treated the tech elite as vain and reckless. The Daily Beast suggested Amazon’s exit looked tied to protecting OpenAI interests, not film quality. The New Republic lingered on Altman’s equivocation about vulnerable users turning to AI tools.