SAG-AFTRA actors union condemns AI avatar Tilly Norwood
By: Chloe Veltman (NPR)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
SAG-AFTRA actors union condemns AI avatar Tilly Norwood
Could the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman be an AI actor?
"Tilly Norwood" is the name of an AI-creation that has riled up Hollywood.
Hollywood has a new "hopeful" by the name of Tilly Norwood — not a human actor, but rather a synthetic creation made with AI.
Tilly Norwood, an AI-generated avatar, is being compared by its creators to A-list human actors. SAG-AFTRA and others are pushing back.
The brunette with the Margot Robbie smile has so far made only brief public appearances — and only on social media. It's unclear whether the AI can perform scenes with other actors, since it only does monologues facing the camera in the clips. But Tilly Norwood's presence has the actors union SAG-AFTRA and others concerned this might be a step toward replacing human talent.
"Tilly Norwood is not an actual human performer. It's an artificially intelligent construct," said actor and SAG-AFTRA president Sean Astin in an interview with NPR. On Tuesday, the actors union issued a formal statement condemning the AI. "Different people will try and create new and interesting things. And it's an exciting environment. But nothing will ever replace a human being."
Astin said that under the terms of SAG-AFTRA's contract with Hollywood producers, studios may not use synthetic performers without giving notice and bargaining over terms. Many NPR employees are members of SAG-AFTRA, but are under a different contract.
AI creations are often touted as being less expensive, and they seem more and more human-like. However, human actors, like Oscar winner Ariana DeBose, have been coming to their own defense.
"The artistry and dedication and real lived human experiences of SAG-AFTRA performers is what has fueled the motion picture industry for more than a century," DeBose said in a statement. "Synthetic performers, on the other hand, are created using technology that is only as effective as the content it is trained on. This technology will never create anything original and it's technology that mines from the work of human creatives without consent or pay."
Delayed reaction
Hollywood has been slow to react to Tilly Norwood's arrival on the scene. Particle6, the London-based production studio behind the AI avatar, released a light-hearted video teaser about her in July. At the time, Particle6 founder and CEO Eline Van der Velden said in an interview with the British trade publication Broadcast International that her company was in discussions with talent agencies about signing Tilly Norwood, calling the AI "the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman."
But Hollywood only began to react this past weekend, afterParticle6 announced at the Zurich Film Festival the launch of a new AI talent studio.
"People are afraid of losing work. And actors are right to be afraid," said veteran Hollywood producer Charlie Fink, who writes about emerging technologies and the entertainment industry for Forbes and teaches on the subject at Chapman University.
It's hard to know how many acting jobs will be disrupted by AI. (A 2024 study predicts a little over 20% of film, television, and animation jobs are likely to be consolidated, replaced, or eliminated by generative AI in the U.S. by 2026 — but this research doesn't look at actors specifically.)
Background and voice actors are likely more vulnerable to the displacement than the Scarlett Johanssons and Natalie Portmans of the world. "I think that we are going to see a ton of synthetic actors," Fink said. "But I don't think in top shelf movies it's going to fly."
Particle6 declined NPR's request for interviews with Eline Van der Velden and Tilly Norwood. But Van der Velden responded to the pushback in an Instagram post on Sunday, calling the AI creation a "piece of art," and "not a replacement for a human being."
Meanwhile, some Hollywood people aren't panicking about Tilly Norwood stealing their limelight — at least anytime soon.
"Bring it on," said host Whoopi Goldberg on ABC's The View . "We move differently, our faces move differently, our bodies move differently. Maybe in two or three years it'll be seamless," Goldberg said. "But it's not seamless yet."
Jennifer Vanasco edited this story for web and broadcast.
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I've seen some anime movies where the characters look and act pretty real - will Tilly be the harbinger of even more realistic humans? Not only are we getting robots, but AI could be bringing us more replacement of humans. I'm no expert in technology, but where are we headed?
I have to admit, for AI, Tilly is hot. But I can see the concern SAG has. Who needs to hire actors for millions of dollars when you can "hire" and AI actor who is always available, doesn't require rest, can do stunts, is not a diva, ect., and probably for much cheaper too?
She's TOO perfect.
Im not complaining
I know there are a lot of positive things about AI, a lot of advantages, but I've always been concerned about the negative ones.
Technology is only positive or negative in how it's used.
One advantage AI would have is in movies where the actor ages throughout the movie. Imagine Tilly at 10, 15, 20, 35, 50, and 70 all in the same movie and it's totally convincing that it's the same person at six different ages.
I was reading an article on this earlier this morning before work. I think Tilly here is more smoke and mirrors than actual AI.
How so?
How will Tilly come off in a live interview on Good Morning America to promote her new movie? Will her laugh seem forced or inappropriate? Will her "thinking" seem predetermined?
I could see this becoming a "thing" though, some people are into fakery.
Good points - she might have a real person prompting her, just as there are real persons controlling robots.
Not hungover. Without a need for a specially crafted dressing room and two hours of makeup.
If you're using any of the major AI engines already, the ability to converse is already extremely strong. They need to improve some of the expressions and the syncing of the mouth movements to the words, but that shouldn't be more than a few years away.
In other words devoid of humanity.
I dunno, John. I don't go to work hungover and I don't demand special concessions just to be civil to the people around me.
Noel Gallagher, formerly of Oasis, describes the modernization of the entertainment industry as it relates to bands:
Let's add to all of this the idea that with AI actors, you never have to worry about your Disney princess tanking her movie by talking politics (Rachel Zegler). You don't have to worry about your Disney musical star having nude photos leaked on the internet (Vanessa Hudgens). You don't have to worry about your star actress and the author of the books upon which the movies are based getting into a public feud about transgenderism (Emma Watson and JK Rowling).
There is no chance of your AI character dying between sequels (Richard Harris), or getting into an irresolvable feud with the show's creator (Kevin Costner and Taylor Sheridan). You don't have to completely rewrite your script because the star of your show got outed for sexual abuse (Kevin Spacey, Danny Masterson). You also don't have to deal with the false accusations about sexual abuse.
So yeah, a lot of human actors are amazing. But artificial ones have a lot of advantages, too.
Well if you want to watch non existent computer generated characters act in Hollywood movies , I guess you will get your chance one day.
A lot of conservative politicians annoy me, can we get them changed out for robots please.
It's been here for a while.
in cartoons
Isn't that what we're really talking about? More realistic cartoons?
That's exactly what she is, she's not AI she is animated by AI. What takes weeks to animate with CGI can be done almost instantly with AI and changed just as fast. They can have her walk across a room and stop and turn to her left and look towards the camera, then they can make adjustments on how fast she walks, turns, or whether she puts her hand on her hip or not. They'll be able to do multiple takes in real time. This really isn't much different than CGI the AI is about making it faster and cheaper because an AI computer can make millions of tiny changes per second.
Good point, but I would still prefer to watch human actors.
Seems to me a lot of them already are.
For the moment, yeah.
I suspect we're moving quickly into an era where you may not be able to tell the difference that easily.
Considering the advances in robotics, that could be a scary thing. Think of the movie Bicentennial Man starring Robin Williams - could we be entering an age when that kind of life will imitate art?
Up next will be AI robots. Tilly in robot form, able to be a fake or real girlfriend, depending on perspective,
LOL, yes, just imagine, a responsive, moaning sex doll.
The technology is not that far off.
It was a couple of years back I seeded an article about a commercial producer firm in England that was teaching AI to create videos. The article from them stated that in a few years one would be able to purchase AI software that could create entire movies without any actors or sets as it could all be AI generated.
Considering the cost to create movies these days it's very possible that in just a few years at least half of all movies could be fully AI generated. And the only way we would know would be if we were told up front. Like everything else the market will decide.
As an aside, I have a few friends who are authors. There's a huge class action lawsuit against a company called Anthropic which was using books to teach their AI, but wasn't paying the authors for the books. While this lawsuit is still being worked thru, there is a $1.5 Billion settlement that's been approved. While that seems like a lot of money for one company, the volume of authors impacted makes the individual payout rather small. I expect lots of legal action in the future around AI usage.
The SAG AFTRA guild is pretty intense on stopping this type of thing and there doesn't seem to be a lot of audience acceptance of it either.
Yeah, I can see that as they are trying to protect the human actors. The cynical bastard in me says there are other motives such as keeping the money rolling in via union dues. But as the average cost to create movies is between $100 and $200 Million depending on scripts, actors, etc it is conceivable that more and more AI will be used. One can look at AI as the next extension of CGI.
I don't know about audience acceptance as this Tilly is very new. Movie audiences readily accepted CGI in movies for years now, look how successful the Lord of the Rings movies were with all the CGI that was used in them. Time will tell.
We'll see.
Good point.
I just remember the outrage at AI use over the credits on Marvel's Secret Wars. It wasn't the only issue with the series, but it pissed a lot of people off.
Maybe someday we'll have AI generated entertainment, but it doubt it's good enough to for my day. ChatGPT is still needs a lot of work and that's just an AI generated search return. There will need to be a lot more work before Tilly is a workable thing.
I had to look that up, wasn't aware of it. But then I don't spend time in a lot of social media as most of it was a waste of time. I can see it, people usually dislike anything new.
How good it is remains to be seen as it's a work in progress. Will we see full movies with only AI generation? I don't know. But I have little doubt that the world is moving towards that. For good or bad, it's coming.
Very sadly I have to agree with you, because my concerrn is that the bad may be greater than the good.
Oh, to be a litigation lawyer in the future - Ed Masry would be even more successful, because Erin Brockovich would be an AI robot.
I'd hardly notice if she was in a movie because I don't really follow actor's lives. I think most stars are not stars just because they act well, it's because they have lives off camera. People who follow stars are the people who make the stars stars and those people want to know about the stars personal lives. I don't think an AI creation would be attractive to those people. Stars date, get married, get divorced, drink too much and sometimes smoke crack and go to jail and the people who follow stars want all that "Dirt". In my opinion AI actors will probably get a lot of work as extras but will never be stars because people aren't going to be emotionally invested in a computer-generated special effect, so they lack that Star Quality.
Bingo. I think the uproar here is that "Tilly" was portrayed as the lead actor. I think we're still a few years away from that but I do believe it's coming.
But look at what AI assisted CGI was able to do in Lord of the Rings. Would the massive battles have been possible without it? And how good was Gollum, even though it was Andy Serkis in a green-screen suit it was CGI that built the character we saw on the screen.
I think they may try and people might even go see her out of curiosity but no matter how good she is I can't imagine people ever saying "Tilly has a new movie coming out and I can't wait to see it because she's such a great actor. Stars put asses in the seats and this is true to the point that Hollywood pays big Stars huge salaries just to put their voices to characters in animated films. They don't do it because it makes the film better, they do it because fans will buy tickets because the stars they love are doing the voices. I doubt AI Tilly will ever have that kind of drawing power.
Depends on whether or not she does nudes.
She could play a stripper who keeps getting Boob Jobs. So they just keep getting bigger and bigger as the movie progresses. Of course it would be a serious movie about Body Dysmorphia.
Or movies like Marilyn Chambers did.
I would because two of my clients were SAG-AFTRA members, one of them a close friend.
Stars date, get married, get divorced, drink too much and sometimes smoke crack and go to jail and the people who follow stars want all that "Dirt".
We have no idea where AI is headed. In ten years there may be a whole network of AI prisons filled with random AI criminals for popular AI actors to be inserted into for AI “reality” shows, after they get “caught” smoking crack with hookers.
Which, in my opinion, is one of the scariest things about it.