Jeremy O. Harris drunkenly called OpenAI's Sam Altman a Nazi at the Vanity Fair Oscar party

At the exclusive Vanity Fair Oscar party, playwright Jeremy O. Harris, known for 'Slave Play,' drunkenly confronted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in front of a star-studded crowd that included Michael B. Jordan and Timothée Chalamet. Harris directly accused Altman of being a Nazi and specifically labeled him the 'Goebbels of the Trump administration,' referencing the infamous Nazi propagandist. The confrontation was reportedly triggered by OpenAI's new, controversial partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense, signaling a significant shift for the company previously known for its cautious approach to AI weaponization.

Following the viral report by Page Six, Harris later walked back his specific historical analogy in an email statement, admitting he had 'a few too many martinis' and misspoke. He stated he should have compared Altman to Friedrich Flick instead—a German industrialist whose businesses profited massively from a symbiotic relationship with the Nazi regime, for which he was later convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at Nuremberg. This clarification shifts the accusation from one of ideology to one of profiteering, framing Altman's OpenAI as a modern entity building a lucrative, enabling relationship with state power, much like Flick's conglomerate did with the Third Reich. The incident underscores the intense cultural and ethical friction emerging as leading AI companies like OpenAI move into defense contracting, drawing fierce criticism from artists and intellectuals concerned about the technology's trajectory.