AI actor Tilly Norwood to star in lead role of new film, ‘Misaligned’
Tilly Norwood, the controversial first-ever AI actor, is set to lead the cast in her film debut named Misaligned.
Norwood was launched by the company Particle 6 to much outrage within the film industry last year, with the creation being unveiled by Eline Van der Velden at the Zurich Film Festival.
Despite many unions condemning the AI actor, including SAG-AFTRA and Equity, Norwood’s creators have persisted in their plans and now have revealed her first feature role, leading the cast in the coming-of-age film Misaligned.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film is being described as “a hybrid production”, wherein human creatives and film professionals have worked alongside those with AI training.
The film is said to be set inside the “Tillyverse”, an AI world in which Norwood has to learn from the humans existing around her.
“Things spiral when a seductive rogue bot from the dark web convinces her to abandon her guardrails and begin developing desires, impulses and ambitions of her own,” it notes.
The synopsis then adds, “The more terrifyingly human she becomes, the more famous she gets, and, significantly, Tilly begins to develop shame that her very being has been built on the whole of humanity.”
Despite the amount of controversy that Norwood, and her signing to the AI talent agency Xicoia has generated, Van der Velden said upon the announcement of the news, “Our work this year has proven something we suspected all along. AI can support premium narrative filmmaking, but only with substantial amounts of human craft, skill, judgement and time.”
She continued: “That’s not a limitation of the technology. That’s the point. The filmmakers who thrive in the next decade will be the ones who bring decades of storytelling instinct to these new tools, and Misaligned is where we put that to work at feature scale.”
Van der Velden has previously attempted to claim that AI actors such as Norwood are “more ethical” than human ones, despite massive concerns about how the technology could overtake human craft in the film business.
Despite this, Shannon Sailing, the audio and new media organiser of the UK actors’ union Equity told the BBC last September: “Tilly is not an actress. She is an AI tool. Or it is an AI tool. That’s not a performer.”
No further details regarding the release or casting, whether human or AI, for Misaligned have yet been revealed.
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