Norwood “is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers,” the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or SAG-AFTRA, said in a statement.
“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,” the union said.
The AI actor was created by Dutch actor and comedian Eline Van der Velden who reportedly said she wanted Norwood to become the “next Scarlett Johansson”. The BBC has reached out to Van der Velden and her company, Particle6.
Norwood’s Instagram page, external includes headshots from faux filming tests and an advertisement spoofing programs on the BBC, including being superimposed on the often-star-studded couch on BBC’s The Graham Norton Show.
Amid the anger and backlash in Hollywood, the Dutch creator, external posted on Tilly’s Instagram page to say that the creation is “not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work – a piece of art”.
“Creating Tilly has been, for me, an act of imagination and craftmanship, not unlike drawing a character, writing a role or shaping a performance,” Van der Velden wrote, adding such creations should be judged “as part of their own genre” rather than compared to human actors.