AI actor Tilly Norwood stirs outrage in Hollywood

Like thousands of actors, Tilly Norwood is looking for a Hollywood agent.But unlike most young performers aspiring to make it in the film industry, Tilly Norwood is an entirely artificial intelligence-made character.Norwood, dubbed Hollywood’s first “AI actor,” is the product of a company named Xicoia, which bills itself as the world’s first artificial intelligence talent studio.Since the Dutch producer and comedian Eline Van der Velden launched the digital character’s prospective career, Tilly Norwood has been all the talk in Hollywood.But not in a good way.Guilds, actors and filmmakers have met the Xicoia product with an immediate wave of backlash, protesting that artificial intelligence should not have a starring role in the acting profession.In a statement Tuesday, the Screen Actors Guild said that “creativity is, and should remain, human-centered.”“To be clear, ‘Tilly Norwood’ is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation,” the guild said.

“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.”Van der Velden, founder of the AI production studio Particle6, last weekend promoted Tilly Norwood at the Zurich Summit, the industry sidebar of the Zurich Film Festival.She said then that talent agencies were circling Norwood and that she expected to soon announce a signing.Many in Hollywood, though, hope that never happens.“Hope all actors repped by the agent that does this, drop their a$$,” wrote actor Melissa Barrera (“In the Heights,” “Scream”) on social media.“How gross, read the room.”“Any talent agency that engages in this should be boycotted by all guilds,” wrote Natasha Lyonne on Instagram.

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