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ADAM BHALA LOUGH AND DEEPFAKING SAM ALTMAN

Spotlight Dive into Adam Bhala Lough’s (Telemarketers, HBO, 2023) provocative and irreverent SXSW Audience Award-nominated documentary Deepfaking Sam Altman, which turned the table on its intended participant to create an AI-generated version of the OpenAI founder when the real Altman refused to be interviewed.

When a documentarian uses deepfake technology not to deceive but to investigate the cultural anxieties around AI itself, we get the deeply tongue-in-cheek and provocative Deepfaking Sam Altman, directed by Adam Bhala Lough.

Previously best known for his HBO docu-series Telemarketers, Adam Bhala Lough sought to understand the increasing ubiquity of AI from OpenAI founder Sam Altman. However, when Altman declined the opportunity for an interview, Lough embarked on a journey of no return, travelling to India to create “Sam Bot”, a deepfake, AI-generated Sam Altman who was open for interview.

Lough, a SXSW 2025 Audience Award nominee, takes us deep into the rabbit hole of his innovative feature doc that deploys synthetic media to interrogate power, authenticity and Silicon Valley’s narratives of “inevitability”.

Discover what deepfakes reveal about the systems that create them, how synthetic media can be critically and transparently integrated into nonfiction works, and how we can assess both its creative potential and its perils.

 

Image credit: Deepfaking Sam Altman (Abramorama, 2025)

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