Last year, a social media post by the fantasy author Joanna Maciejewska went viral. It read: “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.” Maciejewska had tapped into a growing disquiet around artificial intelligence. Instead of assisting with tasks we’d rather not do, it’s cheapening the parts of our lives that are enriching and fun – taking creativity and draining the life out of it.
This cheapening reached a new low last weekend with the unveiling of a new Hollywood star-to-be, a digital avatar referred to as “Tilly Norwood”, at the Zurich film festival. Manifesting on screens as a young woman with long brown hair and a winning smile, Norwood is a “screen-ready” actor created using AI, hailed by her (its?) creators as “the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman”. The comparisons are crass, but the images of this digital creation, this Hollywood AI-lister, are nonetheless frighteningly real. Norwood has the fresh-faced, girl-next-door look that agents and casting directors can’t get enough of – think Olivia Rodrigo meets Glee’s Lea Michele. Remarkably for an AI creation, she also has the correct number of fingers and teeth.
The response from flesh-and-blood stars such Emily Blunt, Toni Collette, Natasha Lyonne and Whoopi Goldberg has been scathing, with Blunt exclaiming: “Good Lord, we’re screwed.” The artists’ union SAG-AFRA was similarly unimpressed, stating that studios using Norwood, or any AI-generated figures like her, would be “jeopardising performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.” But the brains behind Norwood (production company Particle 6) are not taking the criticism lying down. A statement from CEO Eline Van der Velden stated: “[Tilly] is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work – a piece of art. Like many forms of art before her, she sparks conversation, and that in itself shows the power of creativity.” To which the only reasonable response is: alright, Michelangelo, this isn’t the Sistine Chapel. It’s just a piece of code.
Of course, pushback from Hollywood won’t halt the rise of a digital revolution that has bajillions in venture capitalist funding behind it. The AI genie is well and truly out of the bottle, and it is encroaching on all areas of our lives, from art, film and literature to healthcare, retail, media and technology. Whether Norwood is a work of incredible craftsmanship or a cynical, labour-saving device that represents another nail in the coffin of the creative industries, we should perhaps put ourselves in the shoes of the film executives wondering whether to hire her. Here is an actor who will not set unreasonable terms for her employment. She won’t insist on a script that passes the Bechdel test, or on financial parity with her male co-stars. There will be no need for insurance, or stunt safety, or intimacy co-ordinators. And those youthful good looks guaranteed to set viewers’ loins aflame? They won’t start going south at the age of 40. For the miserly and unscrupulous studio executive, what’s not to love?
It has become customary, since the rise of AI, to reassure ourselves with the notion that we will always crave work with a human touch, and that no machine can replicate the poetry, songs and performances that can move us to tears. There is certainly truth in that. But this summer a band named Velvet Sundown, with shades of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, amassed a million plays on Spotify before it was revealed that the music, promotional images and backstory were all created by AI. Meanwhile, a study conducted last year by the University of Pittsburgh revealed that readers enjoyed poetry created by AI over the works of TS Eliot, Sylvia Plath and Walt Whitman. From this we can either extrapolate that canonical poets are not as good as we thought, that AI is capable of true artistic genius… or that people can be idiots. I’m going with the latter.
While it’s tempting to assume that the public would turn their noses up at a digitised Hollywood star, consider that, at the time of writing, Norwood already has over 45,000 followers on Instagram – where her handle cutely describes her as an “Actress (aspiring).” Little wonder that, according to Deadline, talent agents are already in talks to sign her.
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None of this is to suggest that art made and performed by living, breathing humans is about to get completely swept away. We are inherently social beings who thrive in communities and love to experience art communally. If we weren’t, theatre and live music would have died out long ago. But one thing we can be certain of is that exchanging humans for digital facsimiles on screen is by no means the endpoint of AI and its interference in the arts. In truth, it’s just the beginning.
