Artificial brings the rise of OpenAI and Sam Altman’s brief removal from the company into a story about who gets to shape powerful AI. Luca Guadagnino’s film treats the leadership struggle as both a corporate drama and a dark comedy, using real milestones as its framework while heightening the personalities around them.
Power is the film’s central theme
At the New York Film Festival premiere, Guadagnino described his interest in people who want to play God. That idea runs through the film: its characters debate the future of advanced AI while also competing over who will lead the organization developing it.
The Golden Gate Bridge gives that conflict a recurring image. Altman, played by Andrew Garfield, points to the bridge to persuade Ilya Sutskever, played by Yura Borisov, of their shared ambition. Later, the same image becomes part of how Altman tries to influence the scientist. The bridge stands in for the scale of what they hope to build and the authority that could come with it.
The film repeatedly returns to the concern that no single person or company should control superintelligent AI, also called AGI. Yet its version of OpenAI keeps circling back to one person’s authority. When a prospective employee asks Mira Murati to explain the company’s complicated org chart, her answer is simple: “Sam’s in charge.”
Characters are recognizable, then exaggerated
Artificial presents its real-world figures as satirical versions of themselves. Elon Musk, played by Ike Barinholtz, is shown as a celebrated visionary who expects people to enjoy his jokes. The performance leans into his sunglasses, his use of the word “epic,” and his habit of starting drumrolls on tables.
Cooper Hoffman’s Greg Brockman is portrayed as Altman’s loyal deputy, drawn to money and power. Monica Barbaro plays Murati as a talented outsider who can be swayed. Sutskever is framed as an idealistic, brilliant scientist who dislikes lying and is hesitant to seek power. Mark Rylance’s Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “godfather of AI,” serves as a sage who can anticipate the conflicts ahead.
Garfield’s Altman is the film’s most forceful presence. The performance depicts him as manipulative and hungry for control, a person willing to use relationships to get his way. Guadagnino and Garfield make that control physical: Altman’s hugs, touches and grips grow more imposing as his influence over Murati and Sutskever develops.
Those gestures turn a workplace power struggle into something visible. A hand on an arm or shoulder becomes part of how the film shows pressure, persuasion and possession. In one scene, Altman gets Sutskever to tell his first lie, then grips him and says, “See? It’s easy.”
Real milestones give the satire its structure
The story is organized around events that happened in the development of the AI lab and its people. It moves from Sutskever meeting Hinton at the University of Toronto in the early 2000s, to the state of the technology in 2012 and the technology’s sale to Google for upwards of $40 million by the end of that year.
It then follows Sutskever and Hinton joining Google in March 2013, a 2015 dinner in Menlo Park with Altman, Brockman, Musk and others, and an OpenAI system beating a human champion at Dota 2 in 2017. The film also depicts Altman’s firing, including the video call in which he learns of the board’s decision.
According to the review, the filmmakers had extensive material to draw on, including documentation connected to lawsuits and leaked communications. That foundation lets the film follow real milestones instead of relying mainly on invented events. Its subject is not simply the launch of a technology, but the institutional and personal disputes that surrounded it.
Where the film takes liberties
Artificial still uses fiction to sharpen its argument. The fictional Altman enters a bunker beneath his California home, filled with greenhouses and guns; the review says the real-life Altman does not have one in that location, as far as is known. Another invented encounter brings a man representing AI doomer concerns to Sutskever in a park.
These scenes make the film’s anxieties more direct, while its documented milestones keep the larger story tied to events. The result is a satire that exaggerates character and imagery but stays close to the broad chronology of OpenAI’s leadership conflict. Its lasting question is who should hold power over AI, especially when the people building it disagree about how that power should be used.