TechStuff What Happens When You Deepfake the CEO of OpenAI? - The Story
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Mar 6, 2026 Adam Bhala Lough, documentary filmmaker who made Deepfaking Sam Altman, discusses creating a chatbot replica called Sam Bot. He narrates building and casting the deepfake, the eerie realism and emotional responses it provoked. He explores legal precautions, debates about empathy for code and robot rights, and how AI may reshape relationships and media access.
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Blocked Interview Led To Creating Sambot
- Adam Bhala Lough tried to interview Sam Altman but was repeatedly blocked, so he pivoted to building a deepfake interview instead.
- He travelled to India, hired a deepfaker and compiled Sam Altman’s public writing, video, and voice data to create a convincing Sambot LLM and voice/face deepfake.
Model Choice Drives Chatbot Personality
- Model choice shapes personality: Lough found ChatGPT too sanitized, so he switched Sambot to Grok which produced a more distinct, sometimes abrasive persona.
- Public figures’ abundant online material makes LLM-based replicas far more convincing because of rich first-person source data.
Casting Hit Resistance Then Found Bollywood Match
- Lough cast actors in the US (Jesse Eisenberg, Michael Cera) who declined deepfake roles, then found a Bollywood actor in India whose facial bone structure matched Altman.
- The Bollywood actor agreed after US actors balked at being fully overlaid with Altman’s face and voice.