Hollywood is fuming over a new ‘AI actress’

By Clare Duffy, CNN

New York (CNN) — After an artificial intelligence-generated “actress” drew intense backlash from human actors, the character’s maker says it’s not meant to replace people. But many in Hollywood aren’t buying it.

It’s just the latest movie-industry feud over a technology that many creatives worry has stolen their work and could eventually replace them.

“Tilly Norwood” looks like a young woman with wavy brown hair and clear skin who, since February, has posted on Instagram much like any other Gen Z influencer. She’s pursuing an acting career — and recently posted about doing “screen tests” in hopes of landing a gig. But Tilly Norwood isn’t a real person, she’s AI-generated, created by Eline Van Der Velden, founder of AI startup Particle6, which says it creates “digital content” for film and TV.

In a recent post, AI Tilly bragged that “in 20 seconds I fought monsters, fled explosions, sold you a car, and nearly won an Oscar. All in a day’s work… literally! Find yourself an actress who can do it all,” along with the hashtag #AIActress.

But the project sparked a flurry of criticism after Hollywood news outlet Deadline reported on Saturday that talent agents were looking to sign Tilly as an actress and that movie studios are quietly embracing AI-generated content. The Tilly Instagram account racked up hundreds of angry comments, including from some of Hollywood’s biggest names.

“Wow … no thanks,” Game of Thrones actor Sophie Turner said in one comment.

“This is incredibly thoughtless and frankly disturbing,” wrote actor Cameron Cowperthwaite, who appeared in “Shameless” and “American Horror Story.” “I hope this backfires in every way humanly and well… Non humanly possible.”

Ralph Ineson, who acted in “Nosferatu” and other films, responded to news of the project with a concise X post: “F**k off.”

In a statement posted to both her and Tilly’s Instagram accounts, Van Der Velden responded to the backlash by saying Tilly is not meant to replace human actors.

“To those who have expressed anger over the creation of our AI character Tilly Norwood: she is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work — a piece of art,” Van Der Velden said. “Just as animation, puppetry, or CGI opened fresh possibilities without taking away from live acting, AI offers another way to imagine and build stories.”

She added: “AI characters should be judged as part of their own genre, on their own merits, rather than compared directly to human actors.”

But that may be cold comfort to the actors who argue AI creations like Tilly couldn’t exist without their work. Hollywood actors, writers, directors and others in the industry have raised alarms for years that their work was used to train AI models without consent or compensation and could then be used to make movies, TV shows or commercials without paying human creatives.

“You didn’t make this. Hundreds of real workers, real photographers, camera operators, heck, even farmers, made this. You took their work and pretended it was yours,” Mara Wilson, known for films such as “Matilda” and “Mrs. Doubtfire,” said in a comment on another Tilly post.

Van Der Velden did not immediately respond to a request for further comment from CNN.

Anxieties around AI were central to the writers’ and actors’ strikes that disrupted Hollywood in 2023. Both Hollywood unions reached agreements that included protections around how major studios and streaming services can use AI.

However, those agreements can’t stop other people from using AI tools — trained by hoovering up much of the internet — to generate work that’s reminiscent of a human actor or an existing movie scene.

Top media companies have begun to go after AI companies for generating content that they say infringes on their intellectual property. Disney and Universal sued Midjourney in June, accusing the photo and video generator of illegally training its AI on their materials and then spitting out unauthorized recreations of beloved characters like Bart Simpson and Wall-E. Warner Bros. filed a similar lawsuit against Midjourney earlier this month. (CNN and Warner Bros. share parent company Warner Bros. Discovery.)

OpenAI on Monday began alerting talent agencies and studios that its updated Sora AI video generator — released on Tuesday, along with a standalone app — may include copyrighted material unless the copyright holder explicitly opts out, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

“We’re working with rights holders to understand their preferences for how their content appears across our ecosystem, including Sora,” Varun Shetty, head of media partnerships at OpenAI, said in a statement to CNN on Tuesday. Sora will proactively block AI-generated videos in the style of living artists and give public figures the option to opt out of having their likeness recreated by the tech, according to OpenAI.

The-CNN-Wire
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