People all over Hollywood are talking about “actress” Tilly Norwood. But that’s not necessarily a good thing as she isn’t real, she’s AI-generated.

As discussed in New York Post (via MSN here), Tilly Norwood is looking for a Hollywood agent.

But unlike most young performers aspiring to make it in the film industry, she’s 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. Then again, she is a comedian. 😉

“To those who have expressed anger over the creation of my 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 on Sunday. “Like many forms of art before her, she sparks conversation, and that in itself shows the power of creativity.”

Let’s just hope parties in litigation cases (like this one) don’t learn to harness that power.

Norwood even has “her” own Instagram account. As of Tuesday, the account had more than 33,000 followers. As of last night, it was up to 49,200 followers – about a 50% increase in two days! If I sound a bit jealous, I might be! 🤣

“Her” account has 15 total posts, consisting mostly of images and videos of “Tilly”. I have to admit this video is really funny. In the comment of the video, it links to “her” site and a LinkedIn profile(!). Alas, that profile doesn’t exist when you go to it – probably because she’s not a real person. I think Gates Dogfish knows something about that! 🤣

So, what do you think? Are you excited or worried about how far AI has come to generate lifelike individuals? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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