This sounds like a bad Anne Hathaway film:
An unknown actress gets critical acclaim for a breakout role. The critics are raving, the public adores her and the box office is raking in the cash.
But the movie studio and her representatives have a problem. She isn’t real. She’s fake. She’s an AI-generated actress, and the whole ruse is about to blow up in their faces.
“The Hollywood Hustle.” Coming soon to a theater near you.
But it’s like Jay-Z used to say: “This ain’t a movie, dog.”
Meet Tilly Norwood. She could be the next Julia Roberts if she wasn’t a soulless computer-generated performance sponge soaking in the skills of hundreds of talented real-life actresses.
How good is she?
According to reports, talent agents are in a bidding war to represent her and cast the AI creation in movies and television.
Norwood’s success has rightfully earned the ire of real-life actors whose pockets are being picked by the latest form of artificial intelligence.
The largest wave of protest comes from The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or SAG-AFTRA, the union representing actors, voice artists and dancers.
The union says the people behind the so-called synthetic performer could ultimately push living, breathing actors out of the industry, and could profit from the likenesses and performances of real, uncompensated Hollywood stars.
”To be clear, ‘Tilly Norwood’ is not an actor,’” the union said in a statement last week. “it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation.”
“Norwood was created by Dutch producer and comedian Eline Van der Velden, the woman behind a company called Xicoia, which bills itself as the world’s first artificial intelligence talent studio.
Van der Velden, a comedian and writer by trade, insists AI performers aren’t trying to replace human actors.
That might be the best joke she has ever told.
“She is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work — a piece of art,” Van der Velden said in a statement on Instagram.
The statement was shared on the fake actress’ real Instagram page, which features Norwood talking on the phone, driving a car and fighting with a metallic monster.
Norwood’s social media account already had more than 50,000 followers.
AI abuse is one of the was one of the threats SAG-AFTRA fought to prevent when the union shut down the TV and movie industry with a strike in 2023.
Among its concessions was the use of AI in a limited capacity.
But the movie industry is just like any other corporate giant. Give them an inch and they’ll take a solar system.
Until now, we had a name for computer-generated characters who made us laugh or cry or put us on the edge of our seats.
We called them cartoons.
Whether it was Princess Jasmine in “Aladdin,” or Queen Elsa in “Frozen,” audiences were impressed by the lifelike characteristics of the movie screen stars.
But even those popular performances featured something that Norwood’s roles would not.
Real actors.
Actress, talk show host and rare EGOT winner Whoopi Goldberg, (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) said AI performers change the level of the playing field.
“The problem with this, in my humble opinion, is that you are suddenly up against something that’s been generated with 5,000 other actors,” Goldberg said on her show “The View.” “It’s got Bette Davis’ attitude, it’s got Humphrey Bogart’s lips. And so it’s a little bit of an unfair advantage.”
Actor Sean Astin, who was recently elected president of SAG-AFTRA, said AI actors haven’t paid their dues — literally or figuratively.
“You’re made up of stuff that doesn’t belong to you,” he told CBS News. “Let’s just make sure that credit is given where credit is due.”
