Controversy Over AI Actress Tilly Norwood
The media union SAG-AFTRA reacts: Tilly Norwood is not an actress and creativity must remain human-centered
A new development is currently sparking fierce debate in Hollywood. Just recently, the so-called "AI actress" Tilly Norwood was unveiled at the Zurich Film Festival.
Behind the tool is the AI production studio Particle6 and entrepreneur Eline Van der Velden. According to her, Norwood is set to become "the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman." The agency that will represent Tilly Norwood is expected to be announced soon. In a LinkedIn post, Van der Velden stated that viewers supposedly care only about a film's story – not whether its actors are human or AI-generated.
Tilly Norwood, as well as Van der Velden's statements, have been sharply criticized by numerous actors and industry representatives over the past few days. The media union SAG-AFTRA issued a statement emphasizing that creativity should remain human-centered:
"The union is opposed to the replacement of human performers by synthetics. To be clear, 'Tilly Norwood' is not an actor, it's a character generated by a computer program. [...] 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."
Criticism has come from actors such as Emily Blunt and Whoopi Goldberg. With the rapid advancement of AI technology, this is likely just the beginning of a much broader debate within the entertainment industry.
AI and Hollywood
Artificial intelligence has been a topic in Hollywood for some time. In the recent past, AI was particularly in the spotlight during the big Hollywood strike in 2023. The situation on platforms such as YouTube has also been out of control for some time. YouTube has been flooded with fake trailers for some time now. You can find out all about this topic here. But of course, films dealing with the dangers of AI have also been produced for many years. In recent years and decades, Alex Garland's "Ex Machina" and Spike Jonze's "Her", among others, have been popular.
"Ex Machina" is a psychologically dense thriller that raises questions about consciousness, manipulation and human loss of control. A young programmer is invited to test the humanoid robot Ava for her intelligence - a kind of Turing test with unclear rules. What follows is a chamber play between man and machine in which it quickly becomes clear: Intelligence is not the same as morality.
In "Her", a man falls in love with an AI operating system called Samantha. The software is empathetic, intelligent, capable of learning – and continues to develop at an ever faster pace. At first, the relationship seems harmless, even romantic. But the deeper the bond, the clearer it becomes: The balance of power is unbalanced, the dependency of the human grows. "Her" shows how emotional bonds can develop with AI – a topic that is more topical than ever with today's language models and digital assistants. The danger in the film lies less in technical rebellion than in the psychological vulnerability of humans to hyper-intelligent, personalized systems.
What was once science fiction is now increasingly becoming reality. Tilly Norwood is probably just the next step. However, due to the rapid development in the field of AI, the film industry is presumably only at the beginning of the debate.
