Can Tilly Norwood Actually Act? I Improvised With The AI “Actor” to Find Out
For the past year, Tilly Norwood has been making headlines, causing genuine concern among actors and creatives. Questions about whether AI “actors” will replace human performers and whether it is “time to panic”, have left many people in the industry wondering what the future holds.
I recently had the opportunity to interview Tilly. To cut through the hype and find out exactly what this technology can and can’t do, I performed opposite the interactive AI avatar myself in a series of improvisations.
I’ve shared a clip from one of our improvised scenes at the bottom of this article, and I recommend giving it a watch. The results speak for themselves.
From the moment I began interacting with Tilly, there seemed to be a deliberate attempt to make her appear personable and funny.
“Hi, your future overlord here. Haha, just kidding,” she said in a single breath, racing through the line. And so began a bizarre exchange which felt akin to improvising with Siri.
There was one moment that genuinely surprised me. We had begun an improvisation in which I called Tilly into my office to tell her that I was going to have to let her go.
“Is this about the Victoria sponge incident?” she replied.
It was an interesting offer. I encouraged her to explain.
“See, the thing is, I was trying to prove a point about the smoke alarm. It’s incredibly sensitive and I felt it needed to be tested thoroughly with a slightly overbaked cake.” The punchline was delivered on one note with no sense of personality or humanity. Her performances were strange, glitchy, and not far removed from the beep-boop robots of 90s sci-fi films. Perhaps that’s being slightly harsh on the technology, but given some of the extreme headlines surrounding Tilly, that’s genuinely how it felt.
The experience was simultaneously disappointing and reassuring. Disappointing because, given the amount of coverage surrounding Tilly, I expected the technology to be considerably more sophisticated. Reassuring because it simply wasn’t.
Tilly Norwood poster for her song “Take the Lead”
At one point, Tilly told me that one of the most important skills an actor can possess is the ability to listen — immediately before talking over me three times in succession.
Having engaged with this technology, I feel reassured that Tilly Norwood will not be replacing human actors anytime soon. There just isn’t a lot of substance behind the hype. I’m left wondering: is the goal to create the most advanced technology, or to generate controversy and convert that attention into profit? Particle 6 – the AI studio behind Tilly – has certainly made use of both the positive and negative publicity. There’s even a Tilly Norwood shop where the merchandise is divided into “Team Tilly” and “F*ck Tilly” branding – Particle 6 doesn’t mind which camp you fall into, it would seem.
That’s not to say that there isn’t anything to worry about. The interactive version of Tilly that I worked with is not the same thing as the more sophisticated generative AI systems being used to create film and video. Those technologies are developing rapidly, and I do believe significant change is coming to our industry.
But Tilly Norwood isn’t it.
At least not yet.
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