Andrew Garfield has something to say about Sam Altman‘s story about the Artificial movie set after the CEO of OpenAI shared the “really weird” alleged meeting he had with Garfield.
In his latest interview with GQ, Garfield was asked about how it felt to run into Altman while embodying his character on the set of Artificial. At this, the actor replied, “I wasn’t there.”
He then went on to deny even having a body double, adding, “No, I saw that interview, and I replayed it a few times to try and discern what he was actually saying, because I was very confused by that. I never had any interaction with him. I’ve never seen him in real life.”
Garfield proceeded to admit that they did shoot outside Altman’s house and “it was an eerie day, for sure.” At the same time, he also added, “We were told that he wasn’t home and his security people were there. I think I saw one security guard. But no, I never saw Sam, so he maybe mistook someone else for me. I have no idea, but I’ve never waved at Sam. I’ve never seen him. I was curious about that.”
Previously, in his interview with Vanity Fair, Altman shared the story that while Artificial was being shot outside of his house, with “notices on our street” about the filming updates, he “didn’t realize what was going on” and “paid no attention.” That’s when he allegedly ran into Garfield.
Altman said, “One morning I was walking down the street to get coffee, and there were all these cameras, and there was a guy dressed exactly like me with my same backpack walking so much that I felt I was in some weird glitch of the simulation or something. It was very strange. And then I immediately figured out what was happening. We waved and went on, but it was really weird. I mean, it’s like a strange thing to see someone that has nailed your kind of quirky mannerisms or whatever.”
The OpenAI CEO also added in the interview that he didn’t speak to Garfield at all, saying, “I waved at him that one time and that was it.”
What is Andrew Garfield’s Artificial movie about?
A biographical comedy-drama, Artificial chronicles the origins, rise, and internal power struggles of OpenAI and generative artificial intelligence. In the movie, Garfield stars as Altman, depicting his trajectory from the early days of the company up to the dramatic November 2023 boardroom crisis where he was briefly ousted and subsequently rehired.
The film looks back at 20 years of AI history, focusing on how scientists Ilya Sutskever (played by Yura Borisov) and Geoffrey Hinton (played by Mark Rylance) made the big breakthroughs that eventually started OpenAI. At its core, Artificial is a story about who controls technology, the power struggles inside Silicon Valley, and the real fears surrounding the rise of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).
