Days after the AI-generated “actress” Tilly Norwood got Hollywood erupting with outrage, much of the discussion at TheWrap’s annual business conference TheGrill revolved around parsing out how the new technology is actually being used on productions and in studio offices here and now. Put simply, is AI tech even capable of creating an AI “actor” right now?
Despite claims from creator Eline Van der Velden that she and her company, Xicoia, had received interest from talent agencies, no one at TheGrill believed that AI actors are seriously going to be a part of Hollywood anytime soon.
“We are in the human business. We have been in the human business. We’re going to continue to always be in the human business,” WME co-chair Richard Weitz said after saying the agency wasn’t interested in signing Norwood. “We’re not interested in taking the best of our actors and the actors in their community and being put in an AI model.”
Yves Bergquist, director of the USC Entertainment Technology Center’s “AI in Media” program, was even more blunt, dismissing it as a “gimmick.”
The speakers at TheGrill joined a chorus of individuals, such as actors Melissa Barrera and Simu Liu, and organizations like SAG-AFTRA in denouncing the idea that AI “actors” could receive the same kind of treatment as humans, raising the question of whether the noise around Tilly Norwood was all just a bid to get attention. After all, the idea of AI replacing humans is a universal fear and a big reason why it’s still considered a “dirty word” in Hollywood. Norwood directly strikes that nerve.
“It is the sort of virus that has been plaguing the discussion around AI that I have been talking about day in and day out,” Bergquist said on a panel at TheGrill. “AI music has been a possibility for years and years. You don’t have any major AI artists out there.”
“I think that this is all evolving, but it’s not clear that just synthetic actors are adding utility of itself, so why do that?” Jon Zepp, head of entertainment, content and platforms at Google, said on a separate panel on AI. And Google has gone all-in on the technology.
That’s because an AI-generated “actor” would stretch the limits of what the technology is capable of right now, with even stills or short videos of an AI character at times flirting with the uncanny valley. TheGrill conference took place the same day that OpenAI unveiled Sora 2, a new video generation model that promises to be a step-up in capabilities over the original. But whether it’s something studios would want to use remains up in the air.
The rejection of Norwood, which represents just one facet of AI, doesn’t mean there aren’t broader applications of the technology, which executives at TheGrill went further in-depth about. They touched upon aspects like the ability to streamline production schedules, create shareable clips of content in a fraction of the time and even generate AI versions of notable personalities as part of a marketing stunt.
Beyond the hype
AI is already being put to use, even if the applications aren’t sexy.
Fox CTO Melody Hildebrandt and Universal VP of Creative Technologies Annie Chang, who spoke alongside Bergquist on the same panel, said that many of the immediate ways AI is being used in entertainment are invisible to the public.
At Universal, production execs are using AI to help break down scripts and organize them into efficient shooting schedules, enabling productions to start rolling cameras faster, Chang said, adding that the tools are useful to generate rough visual approximations of ideas and concepts that allow creatives to better communicate their vision to others.
Hildebrandt also noted that during a time when many TV viewers are watching clips of shows, particularly late night, in YouTube videos and TikTok snippets, AI can help studios scan their content libraries for the most shareable clips.
“We can actually be present in those platforms and make our content discoverable, make it more searchable,” she said.
That’s not to say AI’s impact is completely invisible. AI-generated video has been used by Fox Sports in video packages for its recent broadcasts, including a 20-second video recapping the career of four-time NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers that aired earlier this month.
Last month, at a special MLB game at Bristol Motor Speedway, Fox showed an AI clip of its pregame host Kevin Burkhardt in a NASCAR race against baseball greats and Fox analysts David Ortiz, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, with the four men watching the AI video live.
“It was a hilarious segment, just really good vibes and fun to watch, and it allowed us to kind of cross-promote NASCAR and MLB with new audiences,” Hildebrandt said. “That was a creative concept that you have a director of marketing come up with and then essentially execute the entire concept in a matter of days to take advantage of the window of opportunity.”
Bergquist says that while major studios are figuring out how to implement AI into immense, well-established production pipelines, AI will have a larger creative impact on an individual level as filmmakers who are just getting started will use the technology in ways that will allow them to get productions done much faster.
Feeling the squeeze
Of course, as that generational shift takes place, countless creative artists will get caught in the crossfire. Last year, members of the Art Directors Guild told TheWrap that they were voting against IATSE’s bargaining agreement because they felt the agreement did not provide members with enough protection against AI automation.
ADG-covered positions like concept artists are among the top positions facing immediate automation, and studio execs like Chang have said that AI’s ability to generate immediate concept art has become an increasingly common part of project pitches.
“A lot of artists have had and will continue to have their styles and artistic identities taken and absorbed into these systems, and the result is going to be very derivative output that is going to affect the quality of these productions,” industrial designer Matthew Cunningham told TheWrap last year.
Recently, independent tech journalist Brian Merchant shared stories of people who have lost jobs to automation, and earlier this month turned his attention to graphics and concept artists. One anonymous respondent said he built his career around doing graphics work on b-roll footage for TV history documentaries that have since been replaced by AI.
“As much as I would like to say viewers will reject the AI style and demand a return to human-made art, I’m not convinced it will happen,” the artist wrote. “Even if it did, it might soon be too late to turn back. I know that there are studios with expert producers, writers and showrunners with decades of experience in this exact genre who are closing their doors.”
When asked about the impact of AI on human work, Chang said she did not foresee a future in which Universal completely removed humans from any part of the production process even as the studio seeks ways to increase efficiency.
One example was color grading, a common part of VFX post-production that changes the color of footage such as the iconic green tint of “The Matrix.” When experimenting with AI, Chang and her team at Universal found that the output of automated color grading is not yet up to proper Hollywood quality.
“It kind of reaffirmed to us that even with AI, you still need the constant presence of humans to control the output,” she said. “If we compromise our creativity, we compromise our business model.”
Ultimately, that initial spark will have to come from a human being.
“There’s combinatory creativity, which takes parts of already existing things and creates something from that, which AI does well,” added Bergquist. “And then there’s change creativity, which imagines something entirely new, and that’s never going to be something AI can do.”
Watch our full panel from TheGrill below:
