{"id":104244,"date":"2025-10-05T17:49:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T17:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/104244\/"},"modified":"2025-10-05T17:49:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T17:49:08","slug":"tilly-norwood-the-ai-actor-has-got-hollywood-alarmed-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/104244\/","title":{"rendered":"Tilly Norwood, the AI \u2018actor\u2019, has got Hollywood alarmed \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the immortal words of Emily Blunt<\/a>, \u201cGood Lord, we\u2019re screwed\u201d.<\/p>\n

She was on a podcast with Variety Monday when she was handed a headline about cinema\u2019s latest sensation, Tilly Norwood.<\/p>\n

Agents are circling the hot property, a fresh-faced young British brunette actress who is attracting global attention.<\/p>\n

Norwood is AI, and Blunt is PO\u2019d. In fact, she says, she\u2019s terrified.<\/p>\n

Told that Tilly\u2019s creator, Eline Van der Velden, a Dutch former actress with a Master\u2019s in physics, wants her to be the next Scarlett Johansson, Blunt protested: \u201cBut we have Scarlett Johansson.\u201d (Cue the Invasion of the Body Snatchers music.)<\/p>\n

All over Hollywood<\/a>, actresses are cursing Tilly, her Pygmalion, Van der Velden, and the increasingly withdrawn men who prefer to be turned on by eternally youthful and preternaturally gorgeous AI replicas. (No Botox or Ozempic needed.)<\/p>\n

And all over Hollywood, suits are licking their chops at the prospect of more malleable actors. \u201cShe\u2019s not going to talk back,\u201d one top talent wrangler said dryly.<\/p>\n

\"EmilyEmily Blunt: ‘Please stop taking away our human connection.’ Photograph: Gerald Matzka\/ Getty Images <\/p>\n

They may be alarmed by one AI actress now, but as AI expert Nate Soares, a co-author of the bestseller If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, explains: \u201cAI is less like one actress and more like a puppeteer behind lots of different characters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Checking out Tilly\u2019s image, Blunt was clearly nettled. \u201cThat is really, really scary,\u201d she told Variety. \u201cCome on, agencies, don\u2019t do that. Please stop. Please stop taking away our human connection.\u201d<\/p>\n

I fear it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Tilly Norwood, the AI actor with a hint of Meghan MarkleOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Human connections have been eroding for some time. We\u2019re all dwelling in Uncanny Valley now, staring into our personal screens, not sure what\u2019s real or fake, to the detriment of talking, dating, reading, living.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re getting another jolt about how fast AI is advancing. Just this past week, we\u2019ve been inundated with racist, juvenile videos posted by Donald Trump<\/a>, mocking Democratic leaders as the government shut down. The president is wallowing in AI slop.<\/p>\n

Sam Altman<\/a>, the head of OpenAI, debuted his Sora app, which creates alarmingly realistic videos of fake scenes. It could be TikTok with a lot more disinformation. You can use a text prompt to conjure terrorist attacks, election fraud, mass protests, war scenes and, no doubt, disturbing sexual scenarios.<\/p>\n

\u201cIncreasingly realistic videos are more likely to lead to consequences in the real world by exacerbating conflicts, defrauding consumers, swinging elections or framing people for crimes they did not commit, experts said,\u201d The New York Times reported.<\/p>\n

The app will further erode truth and comity. This in a country where the president sets a horrible example promoting false narratives and fake videos, and where nearly two-thirds of voters believe we\u2019re too politically divided to solve our problems.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Avoiding the temptation to replace journalists with AI is crucial for news mediaOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Sora will certainly be used by some to justify rejecting real content as fake. \u201cUntil recently,\u201d the Times story noted, \u201cvideos were reasonably reliable as evidence of actual events, even after it became easy to edit photographs and text in realistic ways. Sora\u2019s high-quality video, however, raises the risk that viewers will lose all trust in what they see, experts said\u201d.<\/p>\n

Although many in Tinseltown are upset by Tilly and Sora, AI will most likely make swift inroads in a degraded Hollywood. Largely gone are the days of blazing movie stars and prestige mass-appeal movies. <\/p>\n

Now, it\u2019s Marvel, sequels, adaptations and streaming shows that feel as if they were written by an algorithm for consumption while scrolling on another screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get it even though I don\u2019t like it,\u201d said Lola Kirke, an actress and author of Wild West Village, essays about New York and her eccentric and creative family. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a business, after all, and they have to keep up with the preferences and demands of the public, who are more used to watching face-tuned influencers lip sync \u2018Real Housewives of New York\u2019 sound bites for 15 seconds than actors telling stories over the course of three acts. Maybe, in some weird way, it will revitalize interest in film and TV? That\u2019s me being optimistic \u2014 albeit in a sad way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The less optimistic view was provided by Jaron Lanier, a top scientist at Microsoft.<\/p>\n

He said that a Hollywood studio chief was crowing about how great AI is because he wouldn\u2019t have to pay \u201call these idiot producers and actors and lighting people and composers and writers and agents.\u201d Lanier told him that studio chiefs would quickly become expendable, too, because everyone will serve at the mercy of \u201cthe big computer server at the centre, and Silicon Valley will just roll right over you.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0There is too much content, too much culture – and that\u2019s just the stuff made by us humansOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

While Lanier thinks a simulated character here and there is fine, he says it\u2019s \u201curgent\u201d to draw the line about \u201cthe difference between AI-generated stuff and reality-generated stuff, to have a system in which we know what\u2019s real and what\u2019s fake.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cThe problem with it is, if you make the whole world run by fakes and simulations, everybody becomes increasingly more dysfunctional. Everybody becomes alienated and nervous and unsure of their own value, and the whole thing falls apart, and at some point, it\u2019s like civilizational and species collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n

That, readers, would be less than ideal.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the immortal words of Emily Blunt, \u201cGood Lord, we\u2019re screwed\u201d. She was on a podcast with Variety…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[289,18,28693,117,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-104244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-artificial-intelligence","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-emily-blunt","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}