The next Scarlett Johansson? AI actors like Tilly Norwood should never be accepted
Computer-generated characters can’t capture the human experience like real people can
Tilly Norwood launched last year and received swift criticism from the entertainment industry. (Wikimedia Commons)
For some time now, there’s been a takeover of artificial intelligence (AI) across the world.
While it’s not like what you see in films such as The Terminator or games like the Mega Man series, it’s still a looming threat that people aren’t taking seriously.
As a disclaimer, I want to note that I don’t think AI is bad — at least some of it. From what I’ve learned from those working in medical fields, AI is helping them immensely. It’s just used more with bad intentions than good, especially when it comes to generative AI.
Generative AI’s plagiarizing of artwork is one of its more atrocious uses. This form of artificial intelligence is ripping away jobs and work from artists actually creating pieces for a passion and a living, which is ruining an industry and a few popular styles of art.
It even goes as far as film studios using AI to bring back stars who long passed to puppeteer their digital corpses for sick entertainment. Hearing the AI-recreated voice of James Earl Jones in Fortnite gives off more than a disturbance in the force — even despite his family granting the online game permission.
I haven’t even mentioned how many resources generative AI consumes to get started and be maintained. It uses up a lot of electricity and drinking water, among other notable things, it also emits a lot of greenhouse gases and causes environmental harm.
At this point, I don’t know how much of the damage can be reversed. However, it doesn’t seem it will happen anytime soon in the entertainment industry.
In 2025, a young actress named Tilly Norwood popped up, hoping to make a name for herself. The big problem, though, is she isn’t real. Norwood was made with artificial intelligence and possibly trained on works from existing actresses.
The creator of this project, Eline Van der Velden, said she hopes Norwood will be “the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman.”
Others, however, have heavily criticized the creation of Norwood and are pushing back on more projects like it that are trying to make their way into the entertainment industry.
The Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) put out a statement in September, noting that Norwood is only a computer-generated character.
SAG-AFTRA also said figures like Norwood will put more actors and actresses out of work, and audiences have no interest in computer-generated content that has no proper connection to the human experience.
Artificial intelligence should never have a place in entertainment — it’s putting people who have passion and a living in the arts out of potential gigs, harming the planet, and being used with awful intentions.
Actors like Tilly Norwood should be completely shut down on the spot, because projects like this lead to an unwelcome, slippery slope between the lines of what humans and AI can do.
