Gwyneth Paltrow, 53, has postponed her Hamptons dinner honoring OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, 41, following intense backlash.
The Oscar winner agreed to host a “private, off-the-record conversation” and dinner with Altman on August 29 at her house in Amagansett, NY, according to information leaked to Puck’s Matthew Belloni.
News of the dinner sparked an onslaught of online criticism, with users slamming Paltrow as a “villain” and “tone-deaf.” Comedian Matt Bernstein, 27, shared a video on TikTok calling Altman “one of the most powerful and evil men unraveling our world as we know it.” Kristen Van Nest, an L.A. thriller writer, accused Paltrow on X of platforming a company that is “actively replacing” writers and actors.
“I guess summers in the Hamptons just aren’t complete these days without sucking up to our new A.I. overlords,” Belloni quipped in Puck’s Hollywood newsletter. “Luckily, Gwyneth Paltrow has you covered.”
Belloni shared a copy of the invitation, which The New York Times confirmed was real; Paltrow clapped back with a series of confusing parody invitations on Instagram for dinners held in honor of fictional characters M3gan, Jessica Rabbit, Shrek, Samantha Jones and the viral character Chanty Beluga. “We’re serving swordfish burritos, Cheddar foam lattes on request,” Paltrow joked.
As the founder of the lifestyle brand Goop, Paltrow is intertwined with the tech world. She’s an investor in numerous tech companies, including OpenAI, and was a temporary spokesperson for the tech company Astronomer.
She also came under fire in June for hosting billionaire military-tech entrepreneur Trae Stephens on her Goop podcast, and she’s friends with Charles Porch, vice president of global creative partnerships at OpenAI.
Paltrow’s cozying up to tech overlords comes during a widespread cultural debate about AI’s role in Hollywood, pushing the entertainment industry into what The Hollywood Reporter called an “existential crossroads” as studios grapple with favoring technology over human creative input.
Under Altman’s leadership, OpenAI has faced a series of lawsuits from creatives over using copyrighted material without permission to train its AI models. Scarlet Johansson, 51, declined Altman’s request for a voice recording for an AI chatbot in 2024, only to later hear what sounded like her on ChatGPT. OpenAI pulled the voice from its chatbot after the actress filed angry complaints.
To some, Paltrow’s AI schmooze-fest felt random, power-hungry, and irrelevant to her own career.
“What does the queen of health and wellness have to do with the king of AI?” Bernstein said. “Paltrow is perhaps our best case study on how new age wellness blends seemingly into techno-fascism.”
