The Entertainment Press Is Failing Its Readers

I Can't Believe I'm Still Writing About This

Author

Steve
October 07, 2025

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The Entertainment Press Is Failing Its Readers

Fair warning: it’s a long post today!

Since last week’s newsletter on the fake “Tilly Norwood” story, I think I’ve gotten permanent brain damage reading the subsequent reporting on “Tilly” in the entertainment press, which continues to operate from the unproven premise that an “AI actress” is close to signing with a talent agent.

Supposed flagship industry publication Variety alone has published 12 articles in just a week’s time about “Tilly Norwood,” such as:

Tilly Norwood “is not available to speak” because “Tilly” is not a thing that exists. “Her” creators have successfully bamboozled entertainment reporters into treating “her” as an actual entity with sentience who would be able to speak independently, when most likely she will be operated via a Mechanical Turk setup they eventually concoct for this purpose. My guess would be something similar to last year’s laughable “Digital Marilyn Monroe” abomination, basically ChatGPT wrapped in a Tilly Norwood skin.

Let’s perform an easy brain modification going forward: when you see “Tilly Norwood” written about in an article, I want you to mentally replace that with “Shrek.” Why? Because Shrek and Tilly Norwood are both computer-generated creations imbued with qualities that make them seem akin to living creatures with emotions; Shrek’s realness is for storytelling purposes and Tilly’s realness is for moneymaking purposes. For some reason, the press treats only one of these two concepts as “real,” even though they are both the exact same amount of real: zero. To wit:

Does Shrek Need a Publicist? Computer-Generated Ogre ‘Is Not Available to Speak’ Yet, but ‘Everyone Wants an Interview’

In the days since he made his entrance during a Cannes Film Festival presentation last weekend, Shrek has been the talk of the town.

But the computer-generated ogre, who is on his way to becoming a household name despite only appearing in one animated film series, hasn’t yet conducted an interview. Variety asked and was told by a publicist for DreamWorks, the company that created him, that “Shrek is not available to speak to at present.”

The company that created Shrek claims the ogre does not identify as a they or an it, which has been more commonly used in press coverage. “His pronouns are he/him,” says DreamWorks, adding that “Everyone wants an interview with Shrek.”

And if Shrek, who was programmed with human abilities like crying in the film Shrek Forever After, is going to work in television or film, he will continue to be asked to do press. That inevitability underscores his need for a personal publicist, who would dictate which outlets were most valuable to engage and perhaps keep certain topics off limits.

If you saw that in a trade publication, you would laugh hysterically and never read anything published inside it again. You’d ask “Why is this reporter treating Shrek like a real person? Is this a bit? Did they have a psychotic break? Am I having a psychotic break?”

In much of my past writing on this topic, I’ve placed the blame for this nonsense squarely on the generative AI companies for their grifting tendencies, and encouraged the industry press to build up its immunity and skepticism towards excessively fanciful claims made without any actual evidence. It does not benefit the film and television business for herd-brained studio execs to read about Tilly Norwood [Shrek] and think it’s an actual product that they can implement. Jobs are on the line!

Unfortunately, the increasingly-stupid types of these stories I’ve consumed over the past few months has led me to the conclusion that the press is at least somewhat complicit in not just enabling but actively pushing these narratives. I’m not sure if it’s simply sheer gullibility, a desire to avoid being seen as out of it or “left behind” by the next hot tech trend, or financial incentives driven by the bosses who run the publications. Or all three together! As I pointed out in “AI: A World of Pure Imagination” regarding a completely deranged line from a Hollywood Reporter article:

Instead, what the AI insurgency could yield is a different kind of creation. There’s a radical thought that AI cinema will help the film world conjure not just scenes but people — “digital humans” that will look and move like real actors without any of the pesky concerns of a bad day, or residuals. If that were to happen, our films would change in unthinkable ways. Humphrey Bogart could be acting opposite Selena Gomez. New actors we’ve never heard of because they’re not people at all could win Academy Awards.

I feel like I’m having a stroke, and not just because of the suspicious ChatGPT em dash in there. This is not reporting! You’re making shit up and saying “Imagine if this thing happened, wouldn’t that be amazing?” Well sure, but does the current AI technology available do these things? Like, can it currently create digital humans? All actual reporting I’ve seen seems to indicate it struggles mightily with consistency.

So what is the point of this breathless speculation? “If that were to happen” is doing a ton of work. I could say this about many things in my life, it doesn’t make it likely, or even possible. Conceivably I could go to law school. “If that were to happen,” I might become a very rich and successful lawyer. But… is it going to happen? Most likely not!

The writers of these articles aren’t just being useless stenographers for gen-AI blathering, they are actively participating in generative AI’s wishcasting and fanfiction themselves. It’s why they write articles starting from the premise that Tilly Norwood [Shrek] needs a talent agent.

This is bad! In a time when we’re post-release on Sora 2, people who read and get their information from the trades need clear-eyed communication about the reality of the capabilities of generative AI. As I wrote above, jobs are on the line.

Look no further than this piece of actual reporting from The Wrap about Lionsgate’s struggles to actualize the big promises they made regarding their deal with AI company Runway:

The challenges facing both Lionsgate and Runway offer a cautionary tale of the risks that come from jumping on the AI hype train too early.

Sure would be nice if someone covering this topic at our trade publications would show an interest in these risks instead of making up science fiction stories about what AI might do! Not to toot my own horn, but when I wrote about the LG/Runway deal over a year ago, I repeatedly pointed out that its coverage was particularly light on many details, other than an incredibly funny assertion that AI would help Lionsgate execs see what John Wick 5 could look like. That’s why Variety doesn’t pay me the big bucks.

Variety is where we started and so where we’ll finish. Let us hop in a time machine to the distant past of 2022, when a certain other tech product was tingling everyone’s nether regions with big promises and very few details: Why Fox Is Investing Millions in NFTs and Blockchain Technology:

Last year, Fox established Blockchain Creative Labs, a venture housed in its Bento Box Entertainment animation division. BCL’s mandate: to create, launch, manage and sell non-fungible token content and experiences as well as other digital goods…

But the strategy is not to make a cash grab for the craze around NFTs as speculative digital collectibles, according to Collier. The long-term vision for BCL is to enable new business models for content distribution and consumer engagement — cutting out the streaming-platform middlemen and, someday, allowing fans to literally own a piece of their favorite TV shows.

“This will pay dividends long into the future,” says Collier of Fox Corp.’s blockchain investments.

Wow! Sounds exciting!

Fox says it is prepared to invest up to $100 million in NFT and blockchain initiatives, looking to signal its seriousness in the sector. (Collier declines to say how much the company has spent to date.) In August 2021, Fox Corp. paid an undisclosed sum to acquire a minority stake in Eluvio, a startup whose platform is designed to distribute and monetize premium content using blockchain to verify ownership and provide access control…

The business potential for Web3 far exceeds what you see in today’s digital-collectibles marketplaces, says Greenberg. The blockchain marks the first time you can grant real digital property rights. Greenberg offers this thought experiment: Consider an environment akin to Napster, the infamous peer-to-peer sharing service that was sued out of existence two decades ago for facilitating rampant piracy. But instead of a value-destroying free-for-all, the Web3 version would give content owners the ability to monetize every single transaction. “We’re reinventing home video,” he says.

I mean, come on, man! It’s the same exact style of coverage. “Greenberg offers this thought experiment” Why are you letting your interviewee get away with thought experiments? Who gives a shit? Is there a product with a real life use case that’s scalable???

Thanks to the magic of time travel, we can now travel back to 2025 and see if indeed home video was reinvented by Blockchain Creative Labs!

125 subscribers for a video channel that last posted 3 years ago… seems bad! Well, YouTube isn’t the platform for everyone, let’s just go to their website bcl.xyz and see what’s cooking!

That’s weird! It’s a redirect back to the fox.com website, seems strange that a subsidiary that was reinventing home video would just sort of disappear into the ether like that. Unless, of course, it was only a company that claimed it was reinventing home video. But how would we tell the difference?

Of course, I understand that generative AI and NFTs are different technologies and will obviously have differing applications. But their coverage is strangely similar, isn’t it? It behooves all of us to consider why that is.

Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:

Sports is now the biggest sector of entertainment. (link)

How to choose the best MacBook. (link)

Ed Zitron’s epic case against generative AI. (link)