Fake AI-Generated Actress Gets Agent - and a Very Angry Reaction from (Human) Actors Union (yahoo.com)
- Reference: 0179672566
- News link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/10/06/009212/fake-ai-generated-actress-gets-agent---and-a-very-angry-reaction-from-human-actors-union
- Source link: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/fake-actor-deepens-anxiety-over-162727190.html
The massive screen actors union SAG-AFTRA " [2]weighed in with a withering response ."
> SAG-AFTRA believes creativity is, and should remain, human-centered. The union is opposed to the replacement of human performers by synthetics.
>
> To be clear, "Tilly Norwood" is not an actor, it's a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation. 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. It doesn't solve any "problem" — it creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.
>
> Additionally, signatory producers should be aware that they may not use synthetic performers without complying with our contractual obligations, which require notice and bargaining whenever a synthetic performer is going to be used.
"They are taking our professional members' work that has been created, sometimes over generations, without permission, without compensation and without acknowledgment, building something new," SAG-AFTRA President Sean Astin [3]told the Los Angeles Times in an interview :
> "But the truth is, it's not new. It manipulates something that already exists, so the conceit that it isn't harming actors — because it is its own new thing — ignores the fundamental truth that it is taking something that doesn't belong to them," Astin said. "We want to allow our members to benefit from new technologies," Astin said. "They just need to know that it's happening. They need to give permission for it, and they need to be bargained with...."
>
> Some actors called for a boycott of any agents who decide to represent Norwood. "Read the room, how gross," In the Heights actor Melissa Barrera [4]wrote on Instagram . "Our members reserve the right to not be in business with representatives who are operating in an unfair conflict of interest, who are operating in bad faith," Astin said.
But this week the head of a new studio from startup Luma AI "said all the big companies and studios were working on AI assisted projects," [5]writes Deadline — and then claimed "being under NDA, she was not in a position to announce any of the details."
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/fake-actor-deepens-anxiety-over-162727190.html
[2] https://www.instagram.com/p/DPOYqaWDnLe/
[3] https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/fake-actor-deepens-anxiety-over-162727190.html
[4] https://deadline.com/2025/09/hollywood-reacts-ai-actress-tilly-norwood-agency-boycott-1236563479/
[5] https://deadline.com/2025/09/talent-agent-ai-actress-tilly-norwood-studios-1236557889/
Change happens, get over it (Score:4, Interesting)
Just like the other Slashdot article about Uber and Lyft drivers. They took jobs from Taxis. Driverless cars will probably take their jobs.
Look at the movie making industry in California. It's a shell of what it used to be. They felt entitled and failed to adapt.
The actors in the article sound entitled too. They don't have a right to acting jobs. Adapt or die. Or learn to code.
Re:Change happens, get over it (Score:4, Insightful)
> The actors in the article sound entitled too. They don't have a right to acting jobs.
No, but they do have a right to their likenesses, and if those were used to train this AI then they have a rational legal argument to make that it should not have been.
Re: (Score:1)
If you can't recognize which actor was used to generate the AI, sounds like fair use (not legally, morally) to me.
Re: Change happens, get over it (Score:2)
Someone, an outsider, will do an all digital movie, with all digital actors. Who's gonna stop them? Then the unwashed masses will decide if it's any good. Were in the Idiocracy, I'm sure they're gonna love it.
If Joe Rogan released such a video, would anyone ask first are the actors real people? It's only different from animation by degrees.
I'm not anxious for this to happen. I'm not the target market, but I can't see it not happening.
Re: (Score:2)
People like animated movies. Despite what the critics say, they also like CGI in live action movies, and like it more the more realistic it is.
Re: Change happens, get over it (Score:2)
> Learn to Code
Man we are well past coding as a major source of employment. Between the layoffs, the automation, and the outsourcing it is not a great time to do coding as a job.
IDC (Score:1)
This consumer doesn't care if it's a meat or generated actor, as long as it's entertaining. If they can keep the generated one away from politics, I'll probably like it more than the meat.
And the argument is bullshit; all the meat actors trained by watching other meat actors, too.
By the way, they're doomed, resistance is futile, AI will be taking over. They might be able to collect some rent for not doing anything for a while, making entertainment more expensive for consumers, but at some point there will b
Re: (Score:2)
> This consumer doesn't care if it's a meat or generated actor, as long as it's entertaining. If they can keep the generated one away from politics, I'll probably like it more than the meat.
> And the argument is bullshit; all the meat actors trained by watching other meat actors, too.
> By the way, they're doomed, resistance is futile, AI will be taking over. They might be able to collect some rent for not doing anything for a while, making entertainment more expensive for consumers, but at some point there will be no new meat actors.
Nah, there will be plenty of them working at every cafe in Hollywood just like they are now.
But in all seriousness, the real problem with acting as a career is that only maybe one or two percent of the people who graduate with degrees in drama actually end up acting as a career. Maybe a quarter of them manage to get some odd jobs on the side doing a little bit of voice acting or hand modeling or whatever, but it doesn't pay the bills. The rest of them end up doing other things. There are far more people
Seen this movie before (Score:1)
Isn't this the real life plot of Simone (w/Al Pacino) [1]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258153/
agent? (Score:1)
why does the computer-generated actress need a human talent agent?
let her get a computer-generated agent
Re: (Score:2)
Surely the "agent" in this situation is analagous to the owner of a bulldozer trying to get an earthmoving job.
Not fake (Score:1)
Tilly is a real AI generated actress, WTF is a fake AI generated actress? Why is the title so biased? Would anyone else like news that is editorialized?
About actors (Score:2)
They'd better get used to the prospect of being replaced by AI-generated characters at some point: movie producers will jump at the opportunity of saving millions of dollar per movie in prima donna salaries.
Actors and Hollywood are dead men walking (Score:2)
Not to mention the porn industry.
It's not just the actors, it's the whole entertainment industry that's doomed.
Look, it's all about money and synthetic actors will always be cheaper. Eventually they'll be better. Even more eventually, your humble home computer will be able to cobble up a personalized drama, comedy, rom com or whatever you want, on command and there will be no more Hollywood, Bollywood or anything like a centralized entertainment industry.
Like the T800 in terminator, this can't be stopped. I
Good luck with that (Score:1)
Gee... There is a new technology that automates something people do and get paid for. The people currently doing it don't like it because it "puts people out of work."
There are no examples where efforts to block or ban a technology were successful. Maybe this will be the first time!
Still a niche product it seems. (Score:2)
It would seem that Tilly Norwood is not quite ready to be accepted on the silver screen.
Meanwhile, her slutty twin sister Titty Morewood has eleventy-seven gazillion subscribers on OF, and is generating revenue measured in GDP..
Good (Score:1)
Anything that makes the elite (specially the useless elite) is great imnsho
Re: Good (Score:1)
Anything that makes them angry*
How to reward for the knowledge used in training (Score:3)
On the topic of AI generated content being theft:
I heard an interview with Brian Eno in which he suggested a system by which profits from AI were partially distributed to society as a whole. I think the idea was that it was too difficult to identify and reward specific holders of IP (the models being trained on "all" human recorded knowledge), but it is nevertheless inappropriate to have zero financial reward for that input.
Re: (Score:3)
What profits? Last I checked nobody had climbed out of the red in the space yet.
Re: (Score:3)
The company may not be profitable but rest assured the suits are doing just fine.
Re: (Score:2)
If the people using copyrighted material to train their AI aren't making a profit, that will just make it less desirable for them to "borrow" other people's work without asking or paying royalties especially when you consider how much public domain text is out there and free to use.
Re: (Score:2)
How do you know it was stolen?
Re: (Score:2)
> How do you know it was stolen?
True - "theft" and "stolen" are loaded terms.
I suppose the idea is that if we accept it as fair that a firm should pay the owners of the capital and labour it uses in the pursuit of profit, then we we might be open to the idea that firms profiting from LLM-based AI should remunerate the factors of that production. The trouble is, it is difficult to identify and quantify all the billions of pieces of input that go into this training. So as we do with taxation, perhaps we could consider a simpler system that
Treat it Like Teaching (Score:2)
> On the topic of AI generated content being theft:
The problem with this is that it makes us all thieves. All our work, regardless of field, is based and built on the work of those who came before us. As Newton himself said back in 17th century "if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". Three and a half centuries later we've got here by doing a lot of shoulder standing and never paying royalties of everything we go on to create to those who taught and inspired us.
I'd be very, very leery of expanding IP rights to allow this.
Re: (Score:2)
> The problem with this is that it makes us all thieves. All our work, regardless of field, is based and built on the work of those who came before us. As Newton himself said back in 17th century "if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". Three and a half centuries later we've got here by doing a lot of shoulder standing and never paying royalties of everything we go on to create to those who taught and inspired us.
> I'd be very, very leery of expanding IP rights to allow this. I'm sure the artists calling for this are not planning to abuse it but we all know by know that standing in the wings are corporations who will that such rights and clobber us all with them.
I agree that whenever we create something we are always using previous knowledge to some extent. The intellectual property system, with all its faults, attempts to allocate reward for this. It will do so for wholesale copying of a previous work, and will to some extent dive into the grey areas. But it's just too difficult and unrealistic to identify and reward all those giants (and even medium stature people) on whose shoulders we might stand. There are so many of them.
But having said that, if we create a s
Re: (Score:3)
It's an interesting idea hey? A system by which some wealth is distributed to society as a whole. Someone should really look into that.
Re: (Score:2)
> It's an interesting idea hey? A system by which some wealth is distributed to society as a whole. Someone should really look into that.
Sarcasm alarm activated... :-)
Yes - We are probably just talking about taxation. But would it be a normal kind of taxation? It is not nation-specific for a start. How should the reward be made? And it would be a tax on a very narrow area of profit. I don't think it could be implemented with current taxation mechanisms.