Posted on 09/30/2025 2:22:13 AM PDT by CIB-173RDABN
Not long ago, a new name appeared in Hollywood chatter: Tilly Norwood. She looks the part of a rising young actress, the kind casting directors might call “a natural.” But Tilly is no actress at all. She is an AI-generated creation — a digital performer assembled from algorithms, capable of smiling, speaking, and captivating an audience without ever setting foot on a soundstage.
Tilly is part of a new wave of “synthetic talent.” AI agencies now maintain rosters of nearly two hundred digital actors, ready to star in commercials, corporate training films, or online campaigns. For the casual viewer, the illusion is seamless. You might never realize you weren’t watching a human being.
For Hollywood, this is not just a curiosity; it is a threat. Real actors get tired, demand contracts, negotiate pay raises, and eventually age. AI actors like Tilly never do. They can perform endlessly without rest, without unions, without residuals. For producers and advertisers chasing lower costs, the temptation is obvious. For human actors, it feels like an existential crisis.
The fear is not misplaced. From writers who worry about scripts being churned out by large language models to actors who see their likenesses cloned without consent, the industry is wrestling with how much “human” should remain in entertainment. If AI can convincingly play a part, what becomes of the people who once did?
But there is a deeper danger here, one that goes well beyond Hollywood payrolls. The rise of synthetic performers points to a broader truth: “seeing” no longer guarantees “believing.”
If a digital actress can hold your attention in a shampoo commercial, what stops a bad actor — political or otherwise — from creating a flawless video of a protest that never happened, a speech never delivered, or a crime never committed?
Today’s tools still carry subtle tells — an odd flicker of an eye, inconsistent lighting, or an expression that doesn’t quite land. But computing power increases, algorithms improve, and costs fall. Ten years from now, it may be possible for anyone with a modest setup to produce a fake so convincing that even experts struggle to tell the difference.
Hollywood’s immediate worry is job loss, and that matters. But society’s greater worry must be truth loss. If video evidence can no longer be trusted, then news, history, and our shared sense of reality become vulnerable. The genie is already out of the bottle, and while laws and disclosure requirements may slow some misuse, they only bind those who intend to obey them.
Honest newsrooms may label AI content — dishonest ones will not. In the wrong hands, the ability to manufacture reality is a tool for propaganda and manipulation. Tilly Norwood may be an experiment in digital entertainment, but she is also a warning: technology that can fabricate lifelike people and events will, unchecked, rewrite parts of our public life with consequences far beyond the soundstage.
Society will need stronger provenance systems, robust verification standards, and a cultural commitment to skepticism. Detection tools and authentication systems will evolve, but they will be in a constant arms race with the creative people building better fakes. In the end, the question is not whether AI will change Hollywood — it already has. The real question is whether we are ready for a world in which reality itself can be manufactured and truth rewritten.
We have wandered down a bad road here. Art is a human creation and, for me, one of the impressive things about good art is the human talent that produced it. The process is as important as the product. Tilly is a product, not a producer. She is a sophisticated cartoon. If I want a cartoon, I will stick with an honest one such as Bugs Bunny.
As far as AI’s potential impact on news and politics is concerned: imagine what someone such as Stalin could have done with AI.
If I want a cartoon, I will stick with an honest one such as Bugs Bunny.
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Rocky and Bullwinkle.
Them, too.
Most actors and the industry that surrounds them are woke. AI is going to put them out of work.
Learn to Code bitches . . .
AI Actress Tilly Norwood Condemned by SAG-AFTRA: Tilly ‘Is Not an Actor…
https://variety.com/2025/film/news/sag-aftra-tilly-norwood-ai-actress-1236534779/
That’s okay. I still won’t watch AI stuff since I can access over 100 years of various movies and 75 years of various TV shows that have human actors. The old stuff is mostly what I have been watching for a long time anyway, because very little that is produced today interests me.
That’s okay. I still won’t watch AI stuff since I can access over 100 years of various movies and 75 years of various TV shows that have human actors. The old stuff is mostly what I have been watching for a long time anyway, because very little that is produced today interests me.
The AI stuff will be woke too.
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