The AI Actress Tilly Norwood: She Is Not Artistic, She Represents Data.
The risk technology poses to human creative expression advanced another step in recent days via the debut of this AI-generated actress, the first 100% AI-generated actor. As expected, her launch during the Zurich cinematic gathering in a comic sketch called AI Commissioner caused an outcry. Emily Blunt labeled the movie “terrifying” and Sag-Aftra, the actors' guild, criticized it as “jeopardising performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry”.
Many concerns arise with Norwood, not least the message her “girl-next-door vibe” sends to young women. However, the deeper issue involves her facial features being derived from actual performers absent their permission or notification. Her cheerful introduction conceals the reality that she represents a fresh approach to media creation that rides roughshod over longstanding norms and laws governing artists and their work.
Tinseltown has foreseen Norwood's debut for years. Films such as the 2002 sci-fi Simone, centered on a filmmaker crafting a flawless actress via computer, along with 2013's The Congress, where an aging celebrity undergoes digital replication by her studio, were remarkably prescient. Last year’s body horror The Substance, featuring Demi Moore as a declining famous person who creates a younger replica, likewise mocked the film world's fixation on youth and attractiveness. Today, much like Victor Frankenstein, cinema faces its “perfect actress”.
The maker of Norwood, performer and author Eline Van der Velden justified her as “not a substitute for a real person”, rather “an artistic creation”, characterizing artificial intelligence as a novel tool, akin to painting equipment. Based on proponents' views, AI will make filmmaking democratic, because anyone can produce movies absent a large studio's assets.
From the Gutenberg press to talkies and TV, all creative revolutions have been feared and reviled. The visual effects Oscar hasn't always existed, of course. Furthermore, artificial intelligence is already involved in movie production, especially in animation and sci-fi genres. Two of last year’s Oscar-winning films – Emilia Perez and The Brutalist – used AI to enhance voices. Dead actors including Carrie Fisher have been resurrected for posthumous cameos.
Yet, even as certain parties accept these prospects, as well as the prospect of AI actors slashing production costs by 90%, employees in the cinematic field are rightly concerned. The writers' strike of 2023 achieved a halfway success opposing the application of AI. And even as leading celebrities' thoughts on Norwood are well-documented, typically it is the less powerful individuals whose employment is most endangered – background and voice actors, makeup artists and production teams.
AI actors are an inevitable product of a culture awash with social media slop, cosmetic surgery and fakery. As yet, Norwood can’t act or interact. She can’t empathise, because, it hardly needs to be said, she is not a person. She is not “art” either; she is data. Real cinematic magic comes from human interaction, and that is impossible to fabricate artificially. We enjoy cinema to witness truthful characters in real places, expressing true sentiments. We do not want perfect vibes.
But while warnings that Norwood is a doe-eyed existential threat to the film industry might be exaggerated, for now at least, that isn't to say there are no threats. Regulations are delayed and cumbersome, even as tech evolves rapidly. More must be done to protect performers and film crews, and the worth of human inventiveness.
