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.
This doesn’t seem like something that benefits the majority of people.
If it was like “here’s free (or at least legitimately cheap) access to some virtual actors. Go make the movie of your dreams, kids!” maybe that would be cool. Maybe there are people out there with brilliant ideas that are blocked by not having real actors to act for them. Maybe.
But this just seems like another way for the rich to keep more wealth for themselves.
You can already hire dirt cheap nobody actors for your indie passion project by putting up a poster near any college with a liberal arts program. Or use a website. Hell, there are even carve outs to stay full union.
But if you have money to make a “real” movie? You have money to pay talent.
Yup. Insert AlwaysHasBeen.meme here.
That last sentence alone has described the entire American business sector for the past 10 years or so
And even further back than that, but post WW2 I feel like progress was made.
Seems like it could be like music production software becoming widely available. Now you don’t need to get a drummer, a bass player etc. Together to make music, you can just make it at home on your computer. It enables lower level people to get off the ground as they now have the tools that the pros do, you want a saxophone but don’t know anyone in town who can play or can’t afford one, just use a synth that sounds like one. Once you get signed though and you have a label giving you studio time you might hire an actual saxophone player because it sounds better.
Same with movies, AI could be helpful in making small low/no budget indie movies, but I don’t think it’s at the same quality as real actors for big budget movies where people expect more, so maybe the wealthy studio execs won’t benefit from it much right now.
If this agency normalizes AI actors for the big movie theatres it’ll help the smaller ones too, IMO.
It’s already happening that people are using AI to make the movies of their dreams (well, short form video, at any rate - The Adventures of Reemo Green is a recent example that comes to mind, I would dearly love to see a TV series of this guy). They don’t need to use an AI actor agency, but they do have to face the “ew, AI!” Reaction to their work. If the big studios start doing it that’ll make things easier for them.