Maeve Bidonde, Staff Writer
Recently AI has made its way into Hollywood via an AI Actress named Tilly Norwood. Norwood has created quite a stir after her Dutch creators mentioned the AI performer is in talks with talent agencies. However, Hollywood is not all that receptive to her as several A-List stars including Emily Blunt and Whoopi Goldberg have been vocal about their opposition to AI actors and actresses. According to BBC, SAG-AFTRA released a statement saying that Norwood is “is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers.” The Union continued their statement by saying, “it has no life experience to draw from, no emotion ,and from what we’ve seen, audiences aren’t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience.”
Tilly Norwood was created by Dutch comedian and actress Eline Van Der Velden who has stated that she would like to see Norwood become the “next Scarlett Johansson.” Norwood’s Instagram page, according to the BBC, has headshots from fake filming tests and an advertisement using programs found on BBC like being edited onto the couch full of stars belonging to The Graham Norton Show. When the backlash grew more intense, Van Der Velden posted on Norwood’s Instagrams saying that Norwood is “not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work – a piece of art”. She continued to say that “creating Tilly has been, for me, an act of imagination and craftmanship, not unlike drawing a character, writing a role or shaping a performance.” She then expressed her desire for creations like Norwood to be judged “as part of their own genre.”
A couple years ago, there were SAG-AFTRA strikes, and part of the deals made to end the strike involved protections against AI usage in projects. SAG-AFTRA, in their statement, reminded agencies and studios that any use of Norwood could violate contracted protections made to end the strikes. NBC obtained a statement from Yves Brequist, director of AI in Media at the University at Southern California’s Entertainment Technology Center, “AI music has been a possibility for years and years and years, and we don’t have any major AI artists out there.” He further added, “I think it’s a gimmick. … Are there going to be digital characters in certain films down the road? Yeah, of course, are there actually going to be talent that’s digital? … No, and boo.”
Norwood is another addition to the debate about AI usage in the industry. SAG-AFTRA has been vocal about their opinion that Norwood is going to undercut the livelihoods of actors and actresses, steal their work to be trained on, and devalue the artistry human actors bring to the screen. SAG-AFTRA has also condemned the various reports claiming that multiple talent agencies are seeking to add Norwood to their repertoire of actors and actresses. The overwhelming feelings towards Norwood appear to be discontented and concerned about how her creation could impact jobs in Hollywood.
Leave a Reply