Uncanny Valley | WIRED
Why Amazon Dropped Its OpenAI Movie; Data Center Workers Are Fighting Back
25 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
We want to hear from you and get you answers. Okay, on to the show.
Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer, Director of Business and Industry.
I'm Brian Barrett, Executive Editor.
And I'm Leah Feiger, Director of Politics and Science. 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.
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.
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.
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 Amadai isn't in the room.
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Chapter 2: Why did Amazon drop the OpenAI movie?
Amazon owns MGM. Paramount is being acquired by the Ellison family. Larry Ellison, obviously the founder of Oracle. So all these sort of 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 like a really glaring example of that.
Yeah, I mean, I can speak firsthand that there were many Twitter Elon Musk film projects that were, you know, in talks, but very difficult to get that to the screen for obvious reasons. You know, 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 like 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 them 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, you know, 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.
Anne St. Maltman was a guest at Jeff Bezos' wedding last year. Like it's personal, it's financial, it's all of these things. Right.
And you sort of hope, like the idealized version of this, right, is the same, that they would treat it the same way as they maybe treat the media industry when you have these billionaires taking over 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, that there's sort of this exertion of influence that you in an ideal world would not be happening. Like powerful interests have owned Hollywood companies for a long time. But, you know, this is sort of just such an overt case.
Yeah. And I think that for open AI, they're really sensitive right now to public opinion. They feel like, and they're not the only ones, Anthropic feels this way too, that AI is increasingly unpopular.
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Chapter 3: What impact is AI having on the film industry?
There's already been some talks about like Sam Altman being ousted again before open AI goes public as soon as this year, probably next year. And so I think that while you might say like, oh, they can just like brush this off, they're focused on other things like They're used to bad media articles and, you know, perhaps negative portrayals.
I think that they're increasingly trying to control the message.
And also the medium, right? I think there's the other deal that happened this week that drew a lot of eyebrows was Google DeepMind announcing a $75 million investment in A24, beloved indie darling, to create AI tools. Leah, I know you feel strongly and sadly about this.
Yeah, but like the thing is, is I kind of hate A24. Like it's already like so programmatic anyway. I'm like, ah, yes, another film in this exact like sepia tone that has like these exact actors playing these exact roles. The minute that I saw that it was A24 getting into bed with Google DeepMind, I was like, perfect. This was like already an algorithm waiting to happen.
Of course, they're going to give it to the bots.
While this content is made for me, I'm a huge fan of A24. However, I've talked to a lot of people in Hollywood about this because there have been all of these deals. And yet, you know, we've seen open AI and like these big AI labs kind of hint that we will be able to produce films with AI really soon. And then you actually see an AI generated film and you're like, certainly not.
But what I am hearing is that AI is being used more and more for like very specific purposes. purposes. It's things like storyboarding. And I believe that in the press release, Google DeepMind and A24 kind of mentioned that as like a possible use case.
It's things like rotoscoping, like basically very labor intensive, specific areas of the film development process that used to take a lot of human labor and were really expensive.
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Chapter 4: What happened with Meta's employee tracking program?
And you can genuinely automate. Those are, you know, as far as some people think, like really good use cases for AI. And I think we will start to see more and more
shots, like specific shots on the big screen that are AI generated, I think I would be very surprised if we see like a feature length film on the big screen that's AI generated start to finish and is anything other than like a one-off gimmick.
There's an ick factor in realizing that something that you engaged with was AI generated and you didn't know that I actually think is important not to dismiss. And then there's the like, can it actually create something that is quality enough to to appear in that type of context.
I do think too, one thing that, this gets to your point earlier, Zoe, that when people see that there's a deal for $75 million, you assume that it's to train AI. You assume that it's going to be, oh, now Google's going to absorb all of A24's stuff into the Borg and like, but it's not that. It is, so it is like,
It's interesting that it's still controversial, obviously, but that it is really for those like trying to find those purpose built tools to support the creation of non-AI film, which gets lost.
Yeah, you need a human. I think there was fear that like Google would be training its models on the A24 catalog. And that's specifically not part of the deal. I think probably Google wanted access to that IP if I had to guess, but like it would be a really bad brand move for A24 to give them that access.
We've talked about how everything's connected.
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Chapter 5: Why is Anthropic improving relations with the government?
File one more connection under this. A24 has Thrive Capital as one of its investors. That is a venture capital firm owned by Josh Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner. Thrive has OpenAI as a major investment, holds a major stake in SpaceX. Warner Brothers, about to be owned by the Ellison family. Just a lot going on in terms of everybody owned by anybody related to everybody.
Film industry trying to cozy up to AI. There are other people that hate it for all sorts of different reasons, too, beyond creativity concerns. There is an ongoing pattern that we've been keeping an eye on, the sustained and increasing backlash against data centers across the country. Today, more than 40% of homes in the U.S.
are within five miles of an operating data center, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. And the construction boom just keeps going as the big AI companies devote billions and billions of dollars towards infrastructure to keep up with the demand.
Wired has reported about residents pushing back against data center construction in their communities from everything that it brings from higher electricity bills to water scarcity, noise, you name it. So workers that are in theory the ones implementing these projects are actually pushing back too in any way they can. Have you guys been following this?
Yeah, it's been interesting to see this evolution. I think we've talked a lot about communities pushing back and that remains an important story, but we've had a couple of stories on Wired and there've been stories elsewhere about people who are directly involved. Carolyn Haskins, Wired staff writer, had a great look at how electricians, right?
We've heard electricians are crucial to building data centers. Some of them are now saying, wait a minute, does this make you a sellout? Does working on a data center mean that you are kind of betraying broader principles, not just electrician principles, just human principles.
You're missing the best part of that story, which was when the electrician said that it's really hard to date once he tells people that he's an electrician who works on data centers.
It's like Cybertrucks. It's like owning a Cybertruck.
It really did remind me of that.
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