Hollywood performers union condemns Al-generated 'actress' Tilly Norwood

The recent debut of an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated “actress” dubbed Tilly Norwood, and its producer's boasts of interest from studio executives, sparked a backlash on Tuesday from the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) actors union, condemning the replacement of human performers with “synthetics.”

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The Hollywood buzz around Tilly Norwood, introduced last Saturday at a film industry conference in Zurich, and the union’s scathing reaction to it reflected the dread many in the creative community feel about the intersection of artificial intelligence and show business.

The official Tilly Norwood launch consisted of a 20-second appearance of the photo-real character — a twenty-something fictional ingénue bearing no particular resemblance to any real celebrity — in a brief video parody about making an AI-generated television show.

Dutch actor-producer Eline Van der Velden, whose London-based AI production studio Particle6 created Tilly Norwood, said during her presentation at the Zurich Summit the project was starting to turn heads.

After months of facing boardroom skepticism, talent agents were starting to tell her: “We need to do something with you guys,” Hollywood trade paper Variety quoted Ms. Van der Velden as saying.

She said an announcement of a first-of-its-kind talent agency deal was a few months away, Variety reported.