The AI Actress Tilly Norwood: She’s Not Art, She Is Data.
The threat to human creativity from technology advanced another step recently via the debut of Tilly Norwood, the inaugural fully AI-created actor. Unsurprisingly, her launch during the Zurich cinematic gathering in a comic sketch called AI Commissioner caused an outcry. The film was called “terrifying” by Emily Blunt while the performers' union Sag-Aftra denounced it for “endangering actors' incomes and undermining human artistic value”.
There is much that is problematic about Norwood, especially the signal her “approachable” persona sends to female youth. However, the deeper issue is that her face has been made from those of real actors lacking their awareness or approval. Her playful premiere obscures the truth that she represents a fresh approach to media creation which disregards established conventions and regulations regulating creators and their output.
Tinseltown has foreseen Norwood's debut for years. Films such as the 2002 sci-fi Simone, about a film director who creates the perfect actress on a computer, and 2013’s The Congress, in which an ageing star is digitally scanned by her studio, were remarkably prescient. The recent body horror film The Substance, with Demi Moore as a fading star who generates a youthful duplicate, also ridiculed Hollywood's preoccupation with young age and good looks. Today, much like Victor Frankenstein, cinema faces its “perfect actress”.
Norwood's originator, the actress and scribe Eline Van der Velden justified her as “not a substitute for a real person”, but “a piece of art”, characterizing artificial intelligence as a novel tool, akin to painting equipment. According to its advocates, artificial intelligence will open up film production, since everyone will be able to make movies without the resources of a big studio.
Starting with the Gutenberg press through sound films and television, 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, primarily in cartoon and sci-fi types. Two of last year’s Oscar-winning films – The Brutalist and Emilia Perez – used AI to enhance voices. Deceased performers such as Carrie Fisher have been revived for after-death appearances.
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 2023 screenwriters' strike in Hollywood led to a limited win resisting the deployment of artificial intelligence. And even as leading celebrities' thoughts on Norwood are well-documented, typically it is the less powerful individuals whose employment is most endangered – extras and vocal performers, cosmetic experts and crew members.
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 isn't “art” as well; she is pure information. The human connection is the true magic of movies, and that cannot be artificially generated. We view movies to observe actual individuals in authentic settings, experiencing genuine feelings. We don't desire flawless atmospheres.
Yet, even if cautions about Norwood being a grave risk to movies are inflated, at least for the moment, that isn't to say there are no threats. Regulations are delayed and cumbersome, while technology advances dizzyingly fast. More must be done to protect performers and film crews, and the worth of human inventiveness.
