Storm in the USA: The Film Industry Protests Against AI Actress

Who is Tilly Norwood?

She is a brunette with large brown eyes, a British accent, and an Instagram profile. Tilly Norwood debuted at a film conference in Zurich as the first fully AI-generated “actress.” During the event, Particle6—the AI company that created Tilly—showcased clips featuring her. Eline van der Velden, head of Particle6, announced that talent agencies are scrambling to sign the new star. Hollywood, however, is not convinced.

The SAG-AFTRA actors’ union, representing 160,000 US artists, immediately released a statement: “Tilly Norwood is not an actress. She is a character generated by a computer program, trained on the work of countless professional artists—without permission or compensation.” Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer, The Devil Wears Prada) reacted to the news on the Variety podcast when the editorial team presented her with a clip of Norwood: “My God, we are done. This is truly, truly terrifying.”

Actors Fight for Protection Against AI

Van der Velden does not hide her ambitions. In an interview with Broadcast International, she stated directly, “We want Tilly to be the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman; that’s the goal of what we’re doing.” At the Zurich conference, she claimed that agents were finally reaching out after months of skepticism. She announced they would reveal the first-ever deal with a talent agency within a few months.

For Hollywood, this sends a disturbing signal. AI was a key point of contention during the 2023 strikes that paralyzed the American film industry. Actors and screenwriters fought for protection against replacement by AI-generated characters. Now, their fears materialize in the form of a few short clips featuring a girl who never existed.

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Future of Entertainment or Marketing Strategy?

SAG-AFTRA remains unforgiving: “Tilly has no life experiences to draw from, she has no emotions, and—from what we’ve seen—audiences are not interested in watching computer-generated content divorced from the human experience.” Sean Astin (The Lord of the Rings, The Goonies), the union’s newly elected president, added in a statement to Variety: “We have a tremendous advantage because the audience wants to watch real human artists in films, series, animation, and video games.”

Yves Bergquist, Director of AI in Media at the University of Southern California, calls the entire commotion “nonsense.” Certainly, many people feel entirely understandable anxiety and fear about the replacement of human talent, he noted in a statement to Reuters. However, he claims his daily conversations with Hollywood decision-makers suggest that no one is genuinely interested in developing fully synthetic “actors.”

In the meantime, van der Velden attempted to defuse the situation. A message from the head of Particle6 appeared on Norwood’s Instagram. “[Tilly] is not a human replacement, but a creative work—an art,” it read. Will Tilly Norwood and other AI actors actually become a permanent fixture in the film industry? Or is this just a marketing strategy by a Dutch company? We might soon see the answer on both the big and small screens.

Read this article in Polish: Burza w USA. Branża filmowa protestuje przeciwko aktorce AI