Andrew Garfield Reveals He Quit ChatGPT Right After Playing Sam Altman in ‘Artificial’

Andrew Garfield has built a career out of disappearing into roles that leave a mark long after the cameras stop rolling, and his latest transformation appears to have followed him home in an unexpected way. The actor is currently juggling press duties for two very different films, one set in medieval England and the other inside the boardrooms of Silicon Valley.

That second project, Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming drama ‘Artificial,’ has Garfield stepping into the shoes of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, chronicling the chaotic five days in November 2023 when Altman was fired and then reinstated at the company. It’s the kind of role that requires serious immersion into a very real, very current cultural flashpoint.

That immersion apparently had consequences. During a Wednesday night appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” Garfield revealed he stopped using ChatGPT immediately after wrapping the film, comparing the reaction to something he experienced once before on a very different project.

Garfield explained that this isn’t the first time playing a tech figure changed his personal habits. He drew a direct line back to his role as Eduardo Saverin in ‘The Social Network,’ telling TheWrap that it was the same thing that happened when he did that film, which was that he got off Facebook immediately.

That same instinct kicked in again after ‘Artificial.’ Garfield followed up by simply stating that he got off his ChatGPT immediately, framing the decision less as a political statement and more as a gut reaction to what he learned while inhabiting Altman’s world for the production.

When Kimmel pressed him on whether playing Altman left him feeling more nervous or scared about AI’s rise, Garfield leaned into some dry sarcasm before turning serious. He first joked that he felt like everything was going great, before admitting he doesn’t fully know how to explain his hesitation beyond a general sense that society is heading into unknown territory the more he learns about the technology.

Garfield also took aim at what he described as the tech industry’s surprisingly candid attitude about AI’s disruptive potential, pointing out that companies openly admit nobody really knows who will lose their jobs or how the economy will adapt. He added a sardonic note that everyone will simply find out together, and that it’s supposedly going to be great.

Garfield noted that the bulk of his Kimmel appearance actually focused on his other current project, ‘The Uprising,’ a Paul Greengrass-directed drama in which he plays the leader of a rebellion against King Richard II in 1300s England. He pointed out that despite ‘The Uprising’ hitting theaters first, he actually filmed ‘Artificial’ before it, calling the back-to-back experience a fascinating contrast in scale.

He described the two roles as polar opposites in terms of humanity, noting he went from playing one of the most powerful people in the world right now to one of the least powerful people in 1381. That whiplash between a modern tech titan and a medieval peasant leader seems to have shaped how directly Garfield is willing to talk about AI’s real-world implications.

‘Artificial’ has already generated headlines before its release, having reportedly been dropped by Amazon MGM Studios in June, just days after Amazon announced a major partnership with OpenAI. Garfield has also previously clarified that he has never actually met Altman, despite now having spent months studying and portraying him on screen.

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