Why Amazon Dropped Its OpenAI Movie, Data Center Workers Fight Back, and Meta Leaks Employee Data

This week on Uncanny Valley, our hosts discuss Amazon’s controversial decision to drop Luca Guadagnino’s film about OpenAI’s Sam Altman—which reportedly did not paint him in a favorable light. Alongside Google DeepMind’s $75 million brand-new partnership with indie film studio A24, how much of a dent is AI actually having in the films we see? They also dive into the recent upheaval of workers—from electricians to software engineers—against data centers. Plus: Meta’s program to track employees’ data gets paused after a massive leak, and Anthropic is now getting along with the government, thanks to CEO Dario Amodei no longer being in the room.

Articles mentioned in this episode:

• A24 Knows You’re Mad About the Google AI Collab
• Some Electricians Think Building Data Centers Is for Sellouts
• Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak
• The Trump White House Is Over Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei

You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett, Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer, and Leah Feiger on Bluesky at @leahfeiger. Write to us at [email protected].

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Transcript

Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.

Brian Barrett: Hey, this is Brian. Before we start, two quick things. If you've been enjoying listening to the show, we would appreciate it if you took a second to rate it in your podcast app of choice. It really helps us reach more people. And second, if you have any questions related to tech, privacy, or politics that you would like me, Zoë, and Leah to take on, now is the time to submit them to [email protected]. It doesn't matter how big or how small, we want to hear from you and get you answers. OK, on to the show.

Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoë Schiffer, director of business and industry.

Brian Barrett: I'm Brian Barrett, executive editor.

Leah Feiger: And I'm Leah Feiger, director of politics and science.

Zoë Schiffer: Today on the show: AI and Hollywood. We're discussing Amazon's MGM Studios’ sudden decision to drop the OpenAI biographical movie just as they were wrapping up production. At the same time, Google's DeepMind is investing $75 million to develop AI tools with the film studio A24. The AI and film industries are becoming increasingly intertwined, and we're ready to take a look at where this is all headed.

Leah Feiger: We'll also dive into some recent controversies regarding data centers. As national and local backlash against data center construction increases, some electricians are even refusing to work on them, and they're not alone. A group of Amazon workers claim they are being investigated for speaking out in favor of regulation.

Brian Barrett: And if you've been listening to the show in recent weeks or reading WIRED, you know that we've been covering the unfolding internal crisis at Meta very closely. This week we had another scoop, the controversial system that tracked employees’ every keystroke and screen activity has been paused after the company leaked sensitive data from it internally. We'll get into whether this series of frustrating incidents could actually lead to change within the company.

Leah Feiger: And later in the show, we'll get an update on how the talks between Anthropic and the government seem to be improving now that CEO Dario Amodei isn't in the room.

Zoë Schiffer: OK guys, I am so excited to talk about the business with this movie Artificial, which was suddenly dropped by Amazon's MGM Studios. To get everyone up to speed, Artificial is a film by the director of Call Me by Your Name and Challengers, two great movies if I do say so. And it's a biographical drama about OpenAI and specifically The Blip, which was this moment in November 2023 when Sam Altman was abruptly fired by his board of directors and then swiftly rehired after basically the whole company revolted. I genuinely cannot believe they made an entire movie about this.

Brian Barrett: Yeah.

Zoë Schiffer: It's been described as The Social Network, but for the AI Age. The movie features a star-studded cast with Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman and Monica Barbaro as the former OpenAI CTO, Mira Murati. The movie was like mid-budget. I think they spent $40 million on production, but it was basically almost done when Amazon announced that they were dropping the film, saying, “It would be better served if it were released by another studio.” The decision has been drawing criticism because it's seen as Amazon basically doing a solid for Sam Altman, who the movie portrays pretty badly. I have to know what you guys think.

Leah Feiger: I have so many thoughts immediately. One, Andrew Garfield, we knew that. We knew it was always going to be him. Playing whiny tech bros is absolutely in his wheelhouse.

Zoë Schiffer: He famously played the Facebook cofounder who was kind of pushed out by Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network.

Brian Barrett: I think too, there's some context here too, which is that Amazon has $50 billion invested in OpenAI, right? So in terms of like, when they say the movie will be better served by another studio, I think what they really mean is the studio will be better served by another movie, right? This is really like—

Leah Feiger: For sure.

Brian Barrett: —arm's length at this. What really strikes me about it is something that we've known is coming and has been happening, but the extent to which the film industry and the tech industry are intertwined right now. Amazon owns MGM. Paramount is being acquired by the Ellison family, Larry Ellison, obviously the founder of Oracle. So all these tech billionaires are now sort of totally intertwined with the movie industry, which is really going to determine what movies get made and what don't. And this is a really glaring example of that.

Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I mean, I can speak firsthand that there were many Twitter/Elon Musk film project that were in talks, but very difficult to get that to the screen for obvious reasons. I do think the film was, everything we heard was that it was going to be unflattering for Sam Altman. In fact, The Blip is pretty unflattering for Sam Altman because the reason that a lot of Sam Altman's executives turned on him and orchestrated what has been called a coup was that they perceived him to be duplicitous, to lie, to tell different people different things based on what he thought they wanted to hear. And in the film, it really seems like Ilya Sutskever, who is the former chief scientist of OpenAI, really comes off as the hero. He's gone on to found another company that's really focused on safe artificial intelligence. And so it doesn't entirely surprise me that this was going to be a complicated project for Amazon to champion. In addition to the investment that you just talked about, Brian, they've also struck a $38 billion compute deal somewhat recently.

Brian Barrett: And Sam Altman was a guest at Jeff Bezos' wedding last year. It's personal, it's financial, it's all of these things.

Zoë Schiffer: Right.

Brian Barrett: And you sort of hope, like the idealized version of this, right, is that they would treat it the same way as they maybe treat the media industry when you have these billionaires taking over at these companies where it's sort of a hands-off, you do what you do. I trust the art. I'm doing this because I believe in it. That's not the case. It's less and less the case in the media industry as well. Jeff Bezos obviously has made some pretty big changes at The Washington Post,