The AI “actor” referred to as Tilly Norwood shall be utilized in a brand new feature film entitled Misaligned, its first lead role as a digitally generated persona.
Particle6, the AI production studio that built Norwood, is developing and producing the film, the corporate told Global News in an email statement. The corporate is led by comedian and author Eline Van der Velden.
The film shall be a comedy-drama and “hybrid production with traditional film and TV professionals — reminiscent of directors, writers and editors — working alongside AI specialists, with AI training and mentorship built into the production itself, Van der Velden said.
“Our work this 12 months has proven something we suspected all along,” she continued, “AI can support premium narrative filmmaking, but only with substantial amounts of human craft, skill, judgement and time. That’s not a limitation of the technology. That’s the purpose.”
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“The filmmakers who thrive in the following decade shall be those who bring a long time of storytelling instinct to those latest tools, and Misaligned is where we put that to work at feature scale,” she continued.
Real-life actors and other film industry players sounded the alarm about Norwood’s inception last 12 months after public discourse emerged concerning the possibility that Norwood would sign with a talent agency, which prompted a response from the Screen Actors Guild.
“To be clear, ‘Tilly Norwood’ will not be an actor, it’s a personality generated by a pc program that was trained on the work of countless skilled performers — without permission or compensation,” it said.
“It has no life experience to attract from, no emotion and, from what we’ve seen, audiences aren’t taken with watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience,” the statement concluded.
Emily Blunt spoke about Norwood during an episode of the Variety Awards Circuit Podcast, referring to the concept of an AI actor as “terrifying.”
“Does it disappoint me? I don’t know the right way to quite answer it, aside from to say how terrifying that is,” Blunt said.
When Blunt was shown a photograph of Norwood, she said, “No, are you serious? That’s an AI? Good Lord, we’re screwed. That is actually, really scary. Come on, agencies, don’t try this. Please stop. Please stop taking away our human connection.”
Misaligned is described by Particle6 as a “coming-of-age story infused with existential AI chaos” that follows Tilly, an AI being with no real body, no childhood, and no lived experience of its own, whose existence is brought into query by a seductive rogue bot from the dark web.
“The film will absolutely be funny, chaotic and self-aware — very Tilly,” van der Velden added. “But underneath it, there’s something deeper about identity, performance, and our very human fears around AI. And yes, art will most definitely be imitating life.”
The movie marks the production studio’s first step into the feature film space, having previously focused on branded content.
— with files from Global News’ Katie Scott
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