“SAG-AFTRA believes creativity is, and should remain, human-centered. The union is opposed to the replacement of human performers by synthetics,” the guild said in a statement. “To be clear, ‘Tilly Norwood’ is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers—without permission or compensation. It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion and, from what we’ve seen, audiences aren’t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience. It doesn’t solve any ‘problem’—it creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.”
Despite the fact that Van der Velden said at the Zurich Summit that she wants Tilly “to be the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman,” she softened her language around the project in a social media post on Sunday (via The Hollywood Reporter). “To those who have expressed anger over the creation of my AI character, Tilly Norwood, she is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work—a piece of art. Like many forms of art before her, she sparks conversation, and that in itself shows the power of creativity,” Van der Velden wrote. “I see AI not as a replacement for people, but as a new tool, a new paintbrush. Just as animation, puppetry, or CGI opened fresh possibilities without taking away from live acting, AI offers another way to imagine and build stories. I’m an actor myself, and nothing—certainly not an AI character—can take away the craft or joy of human performance…. Creating Tilly has been, for me, an act of imagination and craftmanship, not unlike drawing a character, writing a role or shaping a performance.”
This is a much more conciliatory message than Van der Velden’s previous declaration (via Variety) that “The age of synthetic actors isn’t ‘coming’— it’s here.” But SAG-AFTRA has been preparing for this battle, including in the 2023 Hollywood strikes where AI was a major issue raised in the negotiations. In its statement about Tilly, the union concluded with a warning that “signatory producers should be aware that they may not use synthetic performers without complying with our contractual obligations, which require notice and bargaining whenever a synthetic performer is going to be used.”
