After 'Artificial,' Andrew Garfield Says He Quit ChatGPT

Andrew Garfield admits he shut down ChatGPT the moment he finished shooting Artificial. It wasn't a press stunt. It was a gut reaction after inhabiting Sam Altman — and then, as he told Jimmy Kimmel, he walked away.

On Jimmy Kimmel Live Garfield unpacked how the role shifted his view of artificial intelligence. He compared the feeling to what happened after The Social Network: 'I stopped using Facebook immediately,' he said. 'This time it was ChatGPT.' Short sentence. Big meaning.

There was a neat cinematic echo in Garfield's schedule. He spent much of the interview talking up The Uprising, Paul Greengrass's historical drama in which Garfield plays a rebel leader opposing Richard II in 14th-century England. The Uprising hits theaters before Artificial, but Garfield pointed out that Artificial was actually filmed first. Two films. Two polar opposite human scales. In one, he plays someone standing among the most powerful people in the world. In the other, he portrays someone with virtually no power in 1381.

So does playing Altman make him fearful of AI? His answer was wry. 'No, no! I think everything is going wonderfully,' he joked, and then grew more serious. The gist was clear: the deeper you look, the murkier the horizon becomes. 'The more you learn,' he said, 'the more you realise we're hurtling into territory we don't understand.'

Garfield also delivered a shot of irony aimed at tech leaders who downplay risks. They admit they don't know which jobs will vanish or how to build an economy that works for ordinary people, and yet they promise a dazzling outcome. 'We'll figure it out,' he mimicked. 'It's going to be extraordinary!' — only he meant it with a pinch of skepticism.

Artificial, directed by Luca Guadagnino, co-stars Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk and will have its world premiere at the New York Film Festival on October 5. The film's distribution took an unexpected turn: Amazon MGM originally planned to release it but pulled out over the summer, and Neon swooped in to acquire the rights. Neon now plans a wide U.S. release on December 25.

Garfield's off-camera choices — giving up a popular app, distancing himself from a piece of tech culture — feel like part of a broader performance: an actor responding to a character by changing how he lives, if only briefly. Curious? See for yourself at NYFF or wait until Christmas to judge whether the story is as unsettling as the actor who plays it suggests.