The AI Actress Tilly Norwood: She’s Not Art, She Is Data.

The threat to human creativity from technology advanced another step this week through the introduction of the digital performer Tilly Norwood, the pioneer completely synthesized by artificial intelligence. Predictably, her unveiling at the Zurich film festival via a light-hearted piece named AI Commissioner sparked controversy. The film was called “terrifying” by Emily Blunt and the actors’ union Sag-Aftra condemned it as “threatening artists' careers and cheapening human creativity”.

Many concerns arise with Norwood, not least the message her “girl-next-door vibe” sends to young women. However, the deeper issue is that her face has been made from those of real actors without their knowledge or consent. Her cheerful introduction conceals the reality that she is part of a new model of media production which disregards established conventions and regulations regulating creators and their output.

The film industry has long expected Norwood's emergence. Features including the 2002 sci-fi tale Simone, about a film director who creates the perfect actress on a computer, and the 2013 production The Congress, where an aging celebrity undergoes digital replication by her studio, were remarkably prescient. Last year's shocker The Substance, featuring Demi Moore as a declining famous person who creates a younger replica, likewise mocked the film world's fixation on youth and attractiveness. Now, Victor Frankenstein-like, the film world is staring the “perfect actress” in the face.

Norwood’s creator, the actor and writer Eline Van der Velden justified her as “not a substitute for a real person”, rather “an artistic creation”, describing AI as a new tool, like a paintbrush. As per its supporters, AI will make filmmaking democratic, 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. The visual effects Oscar hasn't always existed, of course. Plus, AI is already integrated into cinema, primarily in cartoon and sci-fi types. Two films that won Oscars recently – The Brutalist along with Emilia Perez – used AI to enhance voices. Dead actors including Carrie Fisher have been resurrected for posthumous cameos.

But while some welcome such possibilities, and the potential for AI thespians to cut filming budgets significantly, film industry staff have valid reasons for worry. The 2023 Hollywood writers’ strike resulted in a partial victory opposing the application of AI. And although top stars' opinions on Norwood have received broad coverage, once again, it's the lesser-known workers whose positions are most threatened – extras and vocal performers, cosmetic experts and crew members.

AI actors are an inevitable product of a culture awash with social media slop, cosmetic surgery and fakery. At present, Norwood is unable to act or communicate. She lacks empathy, since, obviously, she isn't human. She is not “art” either; she is data. The human connection is the true magic of movies, and that is impossible to fabricate artificially. We view movies to observe actual individuals in authentic settings, experiencing genuine feelings. We don't desire flawless atmospheres.

However, although alerts that Norwood poses a wide-eyed danger to cinema may be overblown, currently, anyway, that doesn’t mean there is nothing to fear. Legislation is slow and clunky, while technology advances dizzyingly fast. More must be done to protect performers and film crews, and the importance of human imaginative power.