Narrator lines from production/gen_trailer_v2.py. The trailer also plays short verbatim quote clips from E01–E03 (Musk's "summoning the demon," Brockman on the raise, Dendi on stage) between these lines; add them from the audio before publishing.

Disclaimer: a dramatization based on public records, including court filings, published emails and company posts. Some scenes and dialogue are reconstructed or composited. Voices are AI-generated and perform words from the public record; they are not intended to resemble any real person. Not affiliated with or endorsed by OpenAI or any person depicted. Allegations in court filings are unproven claims. The Role Models is produced by Will Sigmon Media with AI-generated voices (ElevenLabs). Quoted emails, posts and filings are read verbatim and attributed; where the parties disagree, both accounts are given, and a company's post written during a lawsuit is treated as advocacy by one side. Sources for each episode are listed in its show notes.

Narrator: December, twenty fifteen. Eleven people walk away from Google, from Facebook, from the richest research labs on Earth, to join a nonprofit that is exactly three days old. This is OpenAI's origin story, told from the inside.

Narrator: October, twenty fourteen. Musk is on stage, and he reaches for an image that will follow him for a decade:

Narrator: Eleven researchers. Every one of them is holding an offer that could change their family's life. The founders did something. It's in the record, in Greg Brockman's own words.

Narrator: Nobody taught it to play Dota. It learned by playing against itself. On stage, microphone in hand, Dendi tries to describe what he just played against.

Narrator: This is the story of the paradox at the center of OpenAI. It's a nonprofit, and to do what it promised, it has to spend like the richest company on Earth. From the first inkling that machines could think, to the five days in November twenty twenty-three that nearly destroyed it.

Narrator: The Role Models. Season One: OpenAI. Every quote sourced. New episodes, coming soon.