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Please Stop Taking Gen-AI Grifters Seriously
How was your weekend? Mine was terrible, because like a moth to a flame I was inexorably drawn to the ongoing entertainment news cycle detailing the saga of one Tilly Norwood, an up and coming young actress who, as Deadline breathlessly wrote, was being “circled” by Hollywood talent agents.
If you’re a regular reader and you watched the video above, you of course know where this is going!
The revelation of a possible agent signing for Tilly Norwood comes just days after Van der Velden officially announced the creation of Particle6 offshoot Xicoia, an AI talent studio designed to create, manage and monetize a new generation of hyperreal digital stars.
If the talent agency signing comes to pass, Norwood will be one of the first AI generated actresses to get representation with a talent agency, traditionally working with real-life stars.
That’s right, another day, another generative AI company working the pliant entertainment press in order to generate PR for their fake product. Two seconds of actual thinking here would immediately prompt a few common sense questions:
Why would an AI actor need a talent agent? Wouldn’t the studio negotiate with Xicoia directly?
What training data was used to create “Tilly Norwood”? Who owns this data?
Why would a movie studio interested in an AI actor replicate the exact same talent and labor structure an AI actor would presumably be intended to bypass?
Why does there exist no footage of “Tilly Norwood” acting in a scene?
Why didn’t you mention which talent agencies were “circling”?
SPOILER: There are no answers to these questions, the purpose of saying “now we’re going to be announcing which agency is going to be representing [Tilly Norwood] in the next few months” is to create a news cycle about it so that they can attract more investment cash from dumb money and interest from dumb CEOs.
Indeed this very news cycle was created, featuring articles with headlines such as:
My favorite is a long piece in Variety titled “AI Creation Tilly Norwood Isn’t an ‘Actress’ — So Don’t Call Her That”:
I know not everyone’s journey is the same. But until an AI character endures living paycheck to paycheck, countless cattle calls, screaming directors and the constant battle with imposter syndrome, I’m not willing to call it an actor.
Do you see the problem here? It’s all beside the point!
The entertainment press simply accepts the premise that “an AI actor is being wooed by talent agents” and makes that the news. I don’t blame Whoopi Goldberg or Emily Blunt for reacting negatively to the story as presented to them, but I do blame the reporters who take it at face value that this is an actual thing that’s real. There’s no evidence that any of this is true! You are working as unpaid PR for generative AI companies!
To explain this in a different way, here is a Variety article from January 2024 about the then-unproduced Paul Thomas Anderson film One Battle After Another:
Oscar winners Leonardo DiCaprio, long rumored to be in the movie, and Sean Penn, who recently popped up in Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, will appear in the untitled film. They join Regina Hall, the Girls Trip and The Hate U Give standout. Production on the film, which Warner Bros. will produce, is set to start this month in California, the state where nearly all of Anderson’s movies have unfolded. The new Anderson project has a contemporary setting and will be an ensemble piece, according to a source with knowledge of the production.
All of the details in this story accurately reflect the film that came out a year and nine months later. This is because the studios have a relationship with industry press wherein they provide truthful information to them in order to do just some of the following:
signal to filmmakers that Warner Bros. is a friendly studio for auteurs
prepare exhibitors to get behind a non-IP film due to the star power involved
alert audiences and fans of Leo, PTA, and others that they are working on a movie together
set the stage for awards committees that this is likely to be an award-winning film
The gen-AI companies, by contrast, do not care about these things. If they are telling you something but not showing any proof, they’re probably fudging the details… at best! They want you to sign on to their unproven premise so they don’t have to do the hard work of actually demonstrating a “Tilly Norwood” use case. When they make exciting-sounding assertions about AI actors, AI podcasts, AI chatbots, and AI video you have to dig deeper and actually ask some questions!
Kernels (3 links worth making popcorn for)
Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:
Amazon launches new OS for smart TVs. (link)
Meta vs EU in “Pay or Consent” ad model. (link)
One Battle After Another: a format guide. (link)