In his latest column, Jonathan McCrea gives his take on the AI ‘actor’ who has become the talk of tinseltown.
I presume by now you’ve heard the name Tilly Norwood. In what sounds like a successful PR stunt for a previously unheard of AI company rather than any seismic shift in the entertainment industry, there’s been a story going around like wildfire that the world’s first AI actor has been “signed by an unnamed agency”.
Her name is Tilly Norwood and she is a pretty girl-next-door brunette with glossy hair, big eyes and perfect teeth. I generally think it’s poor taste to discuss how someone looks, but in this case, Tilly isn’t a person, so … I guess that makes it okay?!
It’s a quirky story that I’m sure Tilly’s creators Particle6 cannot believe has gotten so much oxygen, but that’s the world of media today for you.
The technology used to create Tilly is freely available – you could make your own AI actor today for €12.99 a month. You’d possibly do a more convincing job, too. The videos shared of Tilly “in action” are pretty pedestrian and very obviously AI. I can say with great confidence, you are unlikely to see her feature in the next Ken Loach film, drinking tea from a broken mug in a lino-floored flat in Manchester, talking about how she had no luck at the job centre.
So, why is this story generating so much attention? There are two reasons, as I see it.
Firstly, using realistic AI characters in film production is as inevitable as the setting of the sun or Manchester United losing. SAG-AFTRA – the organisation that represent real, human actors in Hollywood – foolishly took the bait and turned this disposable press release into a front page story for Variety, BBC, The Guardian and countless others. They did so by releasing a statement denouncing Tilly: “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”. Somebody should tell James Gunn this, amiright?
But we have seen AI in films before, right?
Yes, we have seen AI de-age Tom Hanks and Luke Skywalker, but fully AI characters have until now only been able to get gigs on LinkedIn, where ‘filmmakers’ spend $3,000 dollars making godawful trailers they claim cost nothing. “Hollywood is so over,” these posts claim. This content is typically bloody awful, so I hate to admit this: but I think they are right.
Does Tilly spell the end of Hollywood? Image: © Particle6
We’re not there yet, despite what Particle6 might want you to think, but new video models are getting scarily good at imitating real life. (If you haven’t seen the sample output from Sora 2, OpenAI’s latest video model, it is frankly awesome in the strictest meaning of the word).
While Tilly may be unconvincing today, it is only a matter of time before studios start to weigh up the cost, effort and – let’s be honest – hassle, of casting a real human when an AI avatar will do a good enough job.
While some directors might want to resist, new filmmakers hungry for an opportunity won’t think twice: it’s a no-brainer.
Sure, it might start with bit parts, but think of the cost and hassle of having one human actor on set deliver a few lines: transport, union wages, hair and make-up, costume, lighting, insurance. And Tilly will give you 100 takes without taking a break and smile while doing it. Kubrick would have had a field day.
The second reason is that this story is a manifestation of the growing exasperation we all have about the ‘enshittification’ of everything through AI. We are constantly told that AI will take our jobs. While true experts and craftspersons will always be in demand, for many of the rest of us wallowing in the sea of mediocrity, this is starting to feel like a genuine possibility.
We are slowly coming to the realisation that our jobs are around two-thirds the way to being completely obsolete: animator, journalist, consultant, career coach, accountant, public relations officer, junior lawyer, junior developer, account manager, marketing, customer service, the list goes on and grows by the minute. AI may not do these jobs much better than we do, but they will do a good enough job for a fraction of the price. We don’t know what to do about it. Nobody seems to know. And yet, onwards we march.
The worst thing about it all is that it is the very people who warn us about this dreadful future most loudly who also have their foot firmly on the accelerator. They’ve also not really explained what on earth we can do about it, which I think is a little unhelpful, to say the least.
This is why the actors are up in arms over something so insignificant as a crappy AI avatar supposedly getting some deal with some unknown talent agency. They see their art, their work, their entire world being absorbed by the ‘Borg’, just like the musicians before them and the writers before them.
Tilly Norwood is the canary in the coalmine not just for actors, but for us all. What do we do when all of our ‘entertainment’ is just generated by an algorithm? Stay tuned to find out.
For more information about Jonathan McCrea’s Get Started with AI, click here.
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