Artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be everywhere these days. ChatGPT and similar spawns have come to preside over our lives, becoming our tutor, our therapist, our friend. Now, if certain Hollywood studios have their way, it will become our jester, too. In late September, Dutch actor Eline van der Velden revealed at the Zurich Summit that several talent agents were looking to sign her studio’s latest creation: an AI character called Tilly Norwood.

Norwood’s first role – a comedy sketch called ‘AI Commissioner’ – illuminates the futility of replacing human talent with AI, as well as suggesting why we’re also worse off as consumers. Not only is the sketch about as funny as a Shakespeare comedy, it’s visually quite unsettling. Characters look like facsimiles of real people – an off eyebrow here, a weird mouth movement there – and the overall effect is more ‘uncanny valley’ than The Polar Express. At least that film, terrifying as some of its visuals may be, had genuine artistic intention at its heart.

The overall effect is more ‘uncanny valley’ than The Polar Express.

It’s transparent that Norwood was created primarily with profits in mind. The studio responsible for her, Particle6, has estimated that using AI characters like Norwood in a production could cut costs by up to 90% – in lieu of hiring actors, makeup artists, caterers, security and such. What these studios fail to realise (or likely do realise, and simply don’t care) is that many AI tools are trained on copyrighted content – usually without the consent of the original creator. Anything made using generative AI is therefore built on uncredited (read: stolen) work.

Norwood arrives as another coal in the fiery debate about whether AI belongs in our entertainment at all. The SAG-AFTRA and WGA (actors’ and writers’ guilds in the US) strikes of 2023 both had the limitation of AI as one of their main concerns. Some have argued about whether AI can ever truly make art at all. (If it wasn’t obvious, I’m in the camp that it’s incapable of art, which can only ever be the product of inspiration and lived experiences.)

The SAG-AFTRA and WGA … both had the limitation of AI as one of their main concerns.

In fact, it’s not just Hollywood that’s being infiltrated by AI. A fake band called The Velvet Sundown – replete with AI-generated band members – went viral in the summer. A man from Colorado won $300 in a local art contest back in 2022, with an AI-generated ‘painting’. Posters, TV title sequences, food photographs; it seems that the only limit to what you can do with AI, ironically, is your own imagination. (Then again, if you run out of ideas, just ask ChatGPT.)

Even articles, my own preferred form of expression, have fallen victim. It’s gotten to the point where I read every online article with a mental ‘ChatGPT checklist’, including misinformation, unnecessarily ambitious vocabulary, and the classic “it’s not ___, it’s ___”. This is the by-product of distilling art into ‘content’, of boiling real effort and passion down to a financial bottom line. The value of creative expression is diminished, and both creatives and consumers are left worse off.

The value of creative expression is diminished, and both creatives and consumers are left worse off.

A common argument, as per Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, is that “AI can give creatives better tools to enhance their overall TV or movie experience for our members, but it doesn’t automatically make you a great storyteller if you’re not.” His comment is an untrue one; he should know, better than most, that great entertainment is often the work of a community of creatives with varying skill sets. Even a simple novel isn’t just the sole work of its credited author, but has contributions from an editor, a cover designer, a social media manager.

The misconception here is that imagination equates to skill; some would like to have you believe that thinking of AI prompts to make an image is equivalent to picking up a paintbrush. What separates the true creatives is those who, instead of using AI to get them across the river, call on those with the skills to make their ideas happen. Otherwise, AI just replaces human talent – putting people out of a job.

AI … is accelerating climate change and dirtying our waters at a faster rate than ever before.

This is all without mentioning the well-documented environmental impact of AI, which is accelerating climate change and dirtying our waters at a faster rate than ever before. Despite this, AI is seeping into every corner of our lives, whether we want it to or not; several times while researching for this article, Google opted to give me an ‘AI overview’ of the results for my query – a feature that my browser won’t let me disable.

The Norwood saga does feel like a bad omen of things to come. After all, what does it say about our society that there’s so much attention around a real-looking woman that’s easily controllable and can’t say no?

What does it say about our society that there’s so much attention around a real-looking woman that’s easily controllable and can’t say no?

Still, the backlash has been heartening to witness. Actors (real ones!) like Scream’s Melissa Barrera and Oppenheimer’s Emily Blunt have been vocal about their disdain for any studio that threatens to sign Norwood. (Nosferatu’s Ralph Ineson was blunter, simply telling Norwood to “f*** off”.) Plus, Van der Velden’s claim that audiences gravitate more towards stories than actors is simply misguided. Quite the opposite; in the age of fancams and white boys of the month, many cinemagoers (myself included!) will flock to films primarily because of a certain someone on the billing.

For the time being, I’ll stick with the recent wise words of one Guillermo del Toro: “My concern is not artificial intelligence, but natural stupidity.” Or, more simply: “I’d rather die.”

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