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The ominous trailer for the Sam Altman movie, Artificial, launched Tuesday, the same day OpenAI became the first AI company to solve one of the Millennium Prize challenges. It was like a tribute to the company’s brutal duality, constantly achieving impressive milestones while being forced to combat the worst public relations. The movie seems like an attempt to paint Altman and AI as villains, with lines like “Countries will fall. Industries are gonna collapse,” as the OpenAI CEO walks by assault rifles with their own mood lighting in what appears to be a secret bunker. It also has parallels to The Social Network, a runaway box office success in 2010 about the rise of Mark Zuckerberg, the fall of his co-founder and, who can forget, the Winklevii. But OpenAI’s founder drama is even more explosive than Facebook’s: Altman had to defeat Elon Musk. ChatGPT wasn’t hatched beneath a volcano to take over the world. From the trailer, Artificial feels like a missed opportunity. And turning a great startup drama into a Bond film (but without James Bond) is inherently less interesting than reality.
document fetched 2026-09-10 02:57 · canonical https://semafor.com/article/09/09/2026/trailer-for-altman-biopic-misses-the-real-drama