The writer of the film Artificial has said AI is “just as powerful and dangerous” as critics of the technology claim.
Luca Guadagnino’s biographical comedy drama stars Andrew Garfield as OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, who was fired and then rehired by the company he co-founded in 2023.
Speaking to the Press Association ahead of the film’s screening at the BFI London Film Festival, screenwriter Simon Rich said he wanted the film to act as a warning.
‘An actual historical reality’
“I just want people to accept that AI is real. It’s not, unfortunately, a fad like NFTs or Beanie Babies. It is an actual historical reality that this technology now exists, and it’s just as powerful and just as dangerous as the scientists claim that it is,” he said.
Speaking about the inspiration for the script, Rich said it was an old friend who had urged him to consider the implications of the rapidly developing technology.
“I came to this subject in a very unusual way, which is that my oldest friend in the world, who I met in kindergarten, is an OpenAI scientist. He has been warning me about this technology for decades,” he said.
“I didn’t start to take him seriously until he joined this small non-profit called OpenAI. About a year before ChatGPT came out, he showed me what they were working on, and I was sufficiently terrified that I felt the urge to warn people.
“So I started writing articles about it, and I wrote a book about it, but nobody really paid it any attention, and so in a kind of like desperate last-ditch effort to warn mankind, I wrote this film.”
Release and real-life figures
Earlier this year it was reported that Artificial was dropped by Amazon MGM Studios due to conflicts of interest after it signed a partnership worth 50 billion dollars with OpenAI.
It was later announced that Neon, the production studio behind Oscar-winning films Anora and Parasite, would release the movie.
Speaking about the film initially being dropped, Rich said he was glad it could still be rolled out.
“I’m just really relieved and excited that the film exists at all. It’s challenging to make films about subjects like that and I think it’s really cool that Neon has supported the film and I can’t wait for people to see it,” he said.
Artificial portrays a number of real-life figures – including OpenAI’s co-founder and chief scientific officer Ilya Sutskever, chief technology officer Mira Murati, board chairman Greg Brockman and co-founder Elon Musk.
Playing real people
Sir Mark Rylance also stars as Geoffrey Hinton – a computer scientist and cognitive psychologist known for his work on artificial neural networks.
He left Google in 2023 after citing concerns about the risks of AI and in 2024, after being awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, called for urgent research into AI safety.
When asked if he felt any pressure playing real-life figures, Sir Mark said: “Playing a real person who is still alive is definitely a challenge.
“But what’s nice about it is usually they are interested to meet me, so I get to meet them and talk to them. I don’t record them or film them, but I get a sense of them, and obviously I observe like a portrait artist would observe,” he said.
“But I’m more listening to what they need or want in their lives. What’s motivating them? Why are they doing what they’re doing, as well as how are they doing it? And obviously, tonight, seeing the film for the first time, I’m nervous that I won’t let Geoffrey down because I really like him and he’s become a friend. Most of the people I play become friends.”
Artificial also stars Yura Borisov, Monica Barbaro, Cooper Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, Chris O’Dowd, Ike Barinholtz, Zosia Mamet and Cooper Koch.
A synopsis for the film teases: “Artificial chronicles the incredibly consequential days leading up to the sudden firing and reinstatement of Sam Altman as CEO of OpenAI, as the fate of who gets to control the technology at the centre of an AI arms race hangs in the balance.”
It will be released in UK cinemas on January 22 2027.
