Hey, want to see something horrible? Here's AI actress Tilly Norwood—which is already more anthropomorphisation than I feel strictly comfortable with—in a comedy sketch called AI Commissioner.
Wretched, right? But buckle up, because Tilly's creators (via Variety) want to turn her into the next big thing. The homunculus-of-code-known-as-Tilly-Norwood is produced by a studio called Xicoia, itself a spin-off of AI production studio Particle6, run by producer Eline Van der Velden.
On stage at the ongoing Zurich Film Festival, Van der Velden told interviewers that "When we first launched Tilly, people were like, 'What’s that?', and now we’re going to be announcing which agency is going to be representing her in the next few months." Per Van der Velden, Hollywood is abuzz with Tilly-mania, and producers all over tinsel-town can't wait to do something with her. It. Her.
I'll believe it when I see it. 'Everyone is very excited about the thing I'm selling' is less evidence than I need to believe AI actors are about to start engulfing our favourite shows, and if that AI Commissioner sketch shows anything, it's that these things still have a ways to go before they don't across as eerie and freakish.
The voicelines seem odd, sometimes stilted, and every wide mouth movement feels like the 'actor's' skeleton is on the verge of breaking free from the cage of their body. Good actors don't do that. Except Doug Jones.
On LinkedIn, Van der Velden wrote that audiences "care about the story — not whether the star has a pulse" and that AI can prove the answer to shrinking budgets and increasing demand for content. "We want Tilly to be the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman, that’s the aim of what we’re doing," Van der Velden told Broadcast International. I think I'd rather just see Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman get the gigs.
