.jpg?trim=0,1,0,0&width=1200&height=800&crop=1200:800 "Stars speak out after AI actress attracts agency interest: ‘What about living young women?’ – UK Times")
Hollywood stars are speaking out in protest after an “AI actress” named Tilly Norwood attracted agency interest.
Norwood is an entirely virtual creation owned by Xicoia, a talent studio attached to the AI production company Particle6.
Deadline reported yesterday that several Hollywood talent agents are interested in signing Norwood.
In response to that article, In the Heights star Melissa Barrera wrote on her Instagram Stories: “Hope all actors repped by the agent that does this, drop their a$$. How gross, read the room.”
In a comment on the story on Instagram, Matilda star Mara Wilson asked: “And what about the hundreds of living young women whose faces were composited together to make her? You couldn’t hire any of them?”
Nicholas Alexander Chavez, who played Lyle Menendez in Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, added: “Not an actress actually nice try.”
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Other stars responded with humor, with The White Lotus actor Lukas Gage writing: “She was a nightmare to work with!!!!”
Pretty Little Liars star Lucy Hale added simply: “No.”
In the original Deadline report, Particle6 founder Eline Van der Velden claimed that they would announce which agency will represent the AI within months.
“We were in a lot of boardrooms around February time, and everyone was like, ‘No, this is nothing. It’s not going to happen’,” said Van der Velden.
“Then, by May, people were like, ‘We need to do something with you guys.’ 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,”
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The 2023 strike by SAG-AFTRA, the Hollywood union representing 160,000 television and movie actors, was partly related to concerns over the rise of AI in filmmaking.
Over the last decade, AI has found several uses in the movie and television industry, from de-aging actors, analysing patterns and behaviours of viewers on streaming platforms, bringing back the voices of late actors and even helping stitch together entire movie trailers.
During the 2023 strike, SAG-AFTRA alleged that Hollywood studios were proposing the use of “groundbreaking AI” to scan background performers and only offer them a day’s pay while the companies get to own the scans and use them for any project they want.
“If you think that’s a groundbreaking proposal, I suggest you think again,” said SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland.
