First reactions to Guadagnino’s “Artificial”: an “essential film” and a terrifying satire of the AI era

After the world premiere at the New York Film Festival on Monday evening, the first critics’ reactions have arrived for “Artificial”, Luca Guadagnino’s drama about the founding of OpenAI and the dramatic days of 2023, when Sam Altman was fired and returned to the head of the company within a few days — and the verdict is enthusiastic, as TheWrap reports.

From the first reactions, Andrew Garfield’s performance in the role of Altman was called “transformative”: critics such as Eric Kohn describe the film as “a perfect black comedy about the lack of accountability in the face of apocalyptic certainty”, while Garfield “walks a fine line between cinematic monster, buffoonish mogul and evil genius”. Critic Jairo Jiménez called the drama “a feverish, visceral corporate drama… an essential film”, while Joshua Rothkopf of the Los Angeles Times described it as “the spiritual sequel to The Social Network”.

At the centre of the story, according to Simon Rich’s screenplay, is the relationship between Altman and co-founder Ilya Sutskever, played by Yura Borisov of “Anora” — praised as “the moral axis of the film”. The cast also includes Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk, Monica Barbaro as former chief technology officer Mira Murati and Mark Rylance as Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, with an electronic score by Damon Albarn. The film’s road to cinemas was turbulent: Amazon MGM withdrew from the release in June amid speculation about the company’s ties to OpenAI, while Neon bought it for around $40 million and scheduled the premiere for Christmas Day.

“Artificial” is perhaps the most dangerous satire of the year about an industry that does not exist without the man it satirises: Altman is still the chief of OpenAI, which gives the film biography an unusual risk — and, according to Variety, could make it “Guadagnino’s best film in a decade”.