- In today’s CEO Daily: Geoff Colvin on what we can learn from Tilly Norwood, the AI “actor” that Hollywood hates.
- The big story: Putin warns U.S. against “escalation” via long-range missiles.
- The markets: New record high.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. What can the most-hated woman in Hollywood teach CEOs about AI? I’m speaking, of course, about Tilly Norwood, a movie actor who is 100% AI. The controversy surrounding Tilly arose when her creator said a number of agents were interested in representing her. The actors’ union responded quickly and furiously, noting that Tilly “was trained on the work of countless professional performers—without permission or compensation” and reminding producers who might want to hire Tilly that they’ll have to deal with the union (yes, really).
It was only a matter of time. In Hollywood, as in your industry, no matter what it is, the day is coming when AI will be able to replace central people or functions. You probably have a sense of who or what they might be. You may be running relevant scenario exercises.
As that day approaches, two lessons from Hollywood for all business leaders:
Never assume that a technology’s current limitations are its inherent limitations. Whoopi Goldberg on The View assured viewers this week that AI actors like Tilly are no threat to humans because “you can always tell them from us. We move differently, our faces move differently, our bodies move differently.” It’s true, that’s the best AI can do—today. But Goldberg is making the same error as the highly intelligent computer scientists of decades past who believed computers would never translate languages very well or play chess above a middling level. Yet your phone now translates 130 languages extremely well, and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov told me a free chess app can now beat anyone, even him. Similarly, AI actors will eventually be indistinguishable from the human version.
Remember that as long as we humans remain in charge, companies must accept that we are quirky and irrational. In the movie industry’s earliest days, the producers tried to conceal the names of the actors, because the actors would gain too much power in negotiations if moviegoers knew who they were. But moviegoers had other plans. They insisted on knowing who the actors were, what they were like, what they did in their free time, and what they had for breakfast. Why did moviegoers care? They just did. It’s a human thing. Fans managed to find out what they wanted to know and spread the word. Eventually, the producers gave up—and found they could make far more money by creating movie stars. Can Tilly ever be a star and bring in the box office that stars can bring, if people know she’s not real and can never win an Oscar?
Hollywood may be an industry unto itself, but it’s offering us all a high-profile view of the AI future.—Geoff Colvin
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
