Has Gwyneth Paltrow completely lost her head?

After recently revealing that she finds two-party politics “so binary” and that “my husband thinks I’m a Republican”, she has reportedly sent out invites for a “private, off-the-record, alfresco” dinner honouring OpenAI CEO and Trumpist turncoat Sam Altman later this month. 

As well as being a self-styled “techno-capitalist” with a net worth of over $3billion, Altman is famed for his consistent views on Donald Trump. In  2017, Altman called him “an unprecedented threat to America” and “irresponsible in the way dictators are”, before modifying that slightly when Trump won in 2024, deciding that the president-elect was in fact “a breath of fresh air” and donating $1 million to his second inauguration.

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The invitation, an ornate blue-on-cream affair with hand-drawn doves and a sun with a human face, sets the date for Saturday, August 29, with cocktails at 6pm and seated dinner at 6.45pm  The venue is listed only as “Gwyneth’s home, Amagansett, NY” with a line noting that the actual address will be provided nearer the time – Altman is hardly the sort of company the liberal Hamptons crowd is keen to be seen keeping.

Unlike many of her colleagues in the film business, Paltrow has been all-in on AI for some time, investing in AI businesses and becoming the voice of AI text-to-speech platform Speechify. Earlier this year, her Goop Kitchen signed a lease for a ground-floor space at the HQ of AI developer Anthropic, giving its coders easy access to mushroom elixirs and coffee enemas, hopefully not to be used during in-person meetings.

Of her goop podcast’s (no outdated capital letters here!) 11 most recent episodes, five have mentioned AI in their title or description as Paltrow pivots from wellbeing to Skynet. One episode features a “wide ranging and honest conversation” with Trae Stephens, co-founder of the AI defence company Anduril, which is creating weapons which can target people without – yawn! – boring old recourse to humans. The pair discuss “how Trae reconciles his Christian faith with an industry built around weapons and warfare”. Quite!

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Stephens is close to far right billionaire Peter Thiel of the data mining and surveillance firm Palantir. Thiel has spent tens of millions of dollars bankrolling prominent populist Republicans and is held responsible for the rise of JD Vance,

If all that wasn’t worrying enough, Paltrow has also been busy recently promoting a luxury real estate development in Israel, starring in a new commercial and marketing materials for 51 Park, two 51-storey towers in Herzliya, just north of Tel Aviv (although the ad was filmed in New York.)

Deciding to advertise luxury penthouses in Israel at this particular moment is an interesting decision, even if Melisron, the parent company behind 51 Park, did not also own a commercial real estate project in the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim in the occupied West Bank. The move has earned Paltrow the nickname ‘Gwynocide’.

Palling around with Sam Altman, hosting the man behind futuristic death machines and fronting campaigns for firms in occupied territories – it’s all a long way from Shallow Hal, isn’t it?