Amazon shelves the release of a “negative” biopic about Sam Altman, after just investing $50 billion in OpenAI

Deep Tide TechFlow News: On June 19, according to Decrypt, Amazon has decided to pull the Sam Altman biopic film Artificial. The film was originally planned to be released by Amazon MGM Studios and is now close to completion; however, executives from Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, after watching the finished version, decided not to move forward with the release plan and instead handed the film over to other film companies to look for a distributor.

It is reported that the early script portrayed Sam Altman in a relatively negative light, with some scenes depicting him as a highly competitive and manipulative figure. Insiders say that as production progressed, the overall tone of the final version became darker than originally envisioned, which became one of the key reasons behind Amazon’s decision to pause the release. In addition, this change came after Amazon invested about 50 billion dollars in OpenAI, and the commercial cooperation between the two as well as their strategic relationship in the AI space have also placed this film—about internal power shifts within OpenAI—in a more sensitive position.