As we’ve come to learn over the past few years, generative AI can’t really make anything new. AI can only create different permutations of things that have already been created, generally popular, well-liked things that its audience will be likely to recognize. With that in mind, it’s totally unsurprising that Misaligned, the first “movie” that “AI actor” Tilly Norwood will “lead,” sounds strikingly similar to Barbie.
This is per Variety, which reports this morning that Misaligned is in early development with AI-focused studio Particle6. The movie is described as “coming-of-age story infused with existential AI chaos” and will be at least partially set in Barbieland the “Tillyverse.” The synopsis obtained by Variety reads: “[T]he film will follow Tilly, an AI being with no real body, no childhood and no lived experience of her own … only access to everyone else’s. Things spiral when a seductive rogue bot from the dark web convinces her to abandon her guardrails and begin developing desires, impulses and ambitions, making her more human.”
We’ll admit this isn’t exactly a one-to-one cribbing of Barbie‘s plot—what made Greta Gerwig’s Barbie more human was actually engaging with the real world—and there’s the obvious influence of the “computer thinks for itself” subgenre that has existed for years. But it’s easy to see how one of the highest-grossing and popular, female-led movies in recent memory might have inspired the minds behind whatever this is. The fact that Tilly is more or less playing herself in this film—should it actually come to fruition—doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence about her range, but she’ll still be giving lessons; Variety reports that the “film” is described as a “hybrid production” that will employ “directors, writers and editors” in addition to AI specialists. We assume “directors” and “writers” is plural due to the century of human artists that this will no doubt end up plagiarizing.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.