Meet Tilly Norwood: She Isn't Art, She Represents Data.
The threat to human creativity from technology took another step closer this week through the introduction of Tilly Norwood, the pioneer completely synthesized by artificial intelligence. Predictably, her unveiling at the Zurich film festival in a comic sketch called AI Commissioner caused an outcry. Emily Blunt described the film as “terrifying” and the actors’ union Sag-Aftra condemned it as “threatening artists' careers and cheapening human creativity”.
Numerous issues surround Norwood, not least the message her “girl-next-door vibe” sends to young women. Yet the graver concern involves her facial features being derived from actual performers lacking their awareness or approval. Her playful premiere obscures the truth that she represents a fresh approach to media creation that ignores traditional standards and legal frameworks regulating creators and their output.
Hollywood has been anticipating Norwood’s arrival for some time. Movies like the 2002 science fiction film Simone, depicting a director who designs an ideal actress digitally, along with 2013's The Congress, where an aging celebrity undergoes digital replication by her studio, were remarkably prescient. The recent body horror film The Substance, starring Demi Moore as a waning celebrity who spawns a younger clone, 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”, rather “an artistic creation”, characterizing artificial intelligence as a novel tool, akin to painting equipment. As per its supporters, artificial intelligence will open up film production, because anyone can produce movies absent a large studio's assets.
Beginning with the printing press to audible movies and TV, each innovative shift has been dreaded and denounced. There wasn’t always an Oscar for visual effects, after all. And AI is already part of film-making, notably in animated and science fiction categories. Two of last year’s Oscar-winning films – The Brutalist along with Emilia Perez – utilized artificial intelligence to refine voices. Late actors like Carrie Fisher have been brought back for roles after their passing.
But while some welcome such possibilities, along with the idea of AI performers reducing production expenses drastically, workers in the film industry are justifiably alarmed. The 2023 Hollywood writers’ strike resulted in a partial victory resisting the deployment of artificial intelligence. And although top stars' opinions on Norwood have received broad coverage, typically it is the less powerful individuals whose employment is most endangered – supporting and voice artists, beauticians and production staff.
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 cannot relate emotionally, for, clearly, she is not a real being. She is not “artistic” too; she is merely data. The human connection is the true magic of movies, and that is impossible to fabricate artificially. We watch films to see real people in real locations, feeling real emotions. We don't desire flawless atmospheres.
But while warnings that Norwood is a doe-eyed existential threat to the film industry might be exaggerated, at least for the moment, that does not imply there is no reason for concern. Legislation is slow and clunky, even as tech evolves rapidly. Further measures are needed to defend artists and cinematic staff, and the worth of human inventiveness.
