Creepy Right Wing Men Swoon Over Tilly Norwood, AI Actress 'Without Opinions'
SAG-AFTRA, actors and normal human beings are less enthused.
Over the weekend, I took a break from what I think might be my third (but could be my fourth) rewatch of Gossip Girl to watch the new Netflix series Wayward. Personally, I thought it was fabulous — a thriller about the troubled teen industry starring should-be Oscar winner Toni Collette? Yes please! Of course, I knew that, given that it was created by and also stars nonbinary comedian Mae Martin as a transgender man, there were going to be people who disagreed. Not that they actually watched it. But yes, over on the hell site formerly known as Twitter, all the usual suspects thrashed and wailed about how they can’t watch anything anymore because they have to “insert trans people into literally everything.”
Like movies they make themselves?
It’s such a bizarre reaction. Like, Mae Martin literally wrote, directed, and produced the whole series themselves, I think they should get to be in it, no? Imagine really believing that Martin should have decided “Gee, you know, I created this whole thing, but I’m not going to actually star in it because that might make ‘Iliftfordoughnuts’ sad!”
People exist. Get over it!
Of course, there are now “people” who don’t exist. Sort of. This weekend also included a lot of drama over “AI actress” (ie: “a cartoon”) Tilly Norwood making its debut at a film festival in Zurich.
Tilly Norwood is the creation of Dutch comedian Eline Van der Velden and her AI “talent studio” Xicoia. At the Zurich Summit, Van der Velden claimed that talent agencies were already clamoring to sign the AI, but that she couldn’t say which ones because “we respect our NDAs.” She did, however, say that she planned to announce who gets the honor of working with her fancy cartoon in the coming months.
As you can imagine, there has since been some pretty serious backlash from actors, from SAG-AFTRA, and from regular people who do not want this.
The union released a statement on Tuesday making it clear to studios that there are rules that they must follow when working with “synthetic performers.”
“SAG-AFTRA believes creativity is, and should remain, human-centered. The union is opposed to the replacement of human performers by synthetics.
“To be clear, “Tilly Norwood” is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation. It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion and, from what we’ve seen, audiences aren’t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience. It doesn’t solve any “problem” — it creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.
“Additionally, signatory producers should be aware that they may not use synthetic performers without complying with our contractual obligations, which require notice and bargaining whenever a synthetic performer is going to be used.”
Van der Velden has since released her own statement explaining that she didn’t mean for her creation to replace human creativity, but that it was just “a creative work — a piece of art.”
However, her previous statements have made it clear that she really is hoping to replace actual artists with her army of robots.
“We want Tilly to be the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman, that’s the aim of what we’re doing,” Van der Velden told Broadcast International.
In a LinkedIn post, she commented “Audiences? They care about the story — not whether the star has a pulse. Tilly is already attracting interest from talent agencies and fans. The age of synthetic actors isn’t ‘coming’ — it’s here.”
And by “it’s here” — she means that Tilly has already had one line in a painfully unfunny “comedy sketch” produced by Particle6, which owns Xicoia.
Yeah, I don’t think they’re going to be taking over just yet. Love the creepy guy saying “She’ll do anything I say, I’m already in love!” about a cartoon that definitely looks like a 14-year-old girl, though.
There is one group, however, who are very ready for their AI overlords — and that is creepy men on social media who are very tired of actors having thoughts and opinions, a noted issue with living, breathing human beings.
Gee, and people wonder why there’s a male loneliness epidemic!
It’s not surprising, really, that there’s such a stark political divide when it comes to acceptance of AI. The Right basically wants a fake, AI world. They want entire groups of people to just disappear simply because their existence makes them uncomfortable. The Left, on the other hand, actually values humanity and art is the highest expression of humanity there is. If you don’t value humanity, if you think empathy is “toxic,” if you don’t want to embrace the full range of humanity, the things that make us different and the things we all share, if you are constantly shaking with rage over the fact that the world isn’t homogeneous enough for you, or you are so unfamiliar with the creative process that you think it would be impossible to create a cartoon with “opinions,” you’re probably going to prioritize crushing your perceived enemies over art.
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So, I did the thing and actually watched that AI-generated "comedy" sketch. Keeping in mind that this is the work product that Particle6 is selling to studios, you'd expect they'd clean up some of the weird mouth glitches on their "actors." That cardigan-wearing white woman sitting at the computer is particularly badly rendered. Yeah, no audience is getting fooled with that slop.
She's nothing but a digital blow-up doll. A mental Fleshlight for the feebleminded.