Would you watch a film starring an AI actress?

Overview

What if the leading performer in the next movie you saw wasn't human, but an AI entity? Tilly Norwood is young, brunette, with brown eyes and what sounds like an English accent. Tilly's show reel depicts her fleeing explosions, preparing to fight a monster... and sharing a romantic moment in a historic drama. But Tilly is an AI-generated creation made by an artificial intelligence talent studio. The studio's CEO said a number of entertainment companies were interested in signing deals with the AI creation. So, what do audiences think? And how do AI performers affect living, breathing, creatives?

Guests: Katina Michael, Professor of technology, strategy, and innovation and visiting research scientist at the University of Sydney Robert Sparrow, Professor of Philosophy at Monash University Karen Jacobsen, singer, songwriter, and voice of Apple's virtual assistant, Siri Credits Kate Uebergang, Producer Image Details AI "actress" Tilly Norwood.(Tilly Norwood Instagram)

Program: More from Life Matters AI, Film Industry

Citation: Tegan Taylor with Karen Jacobsen, Katina Michael and Rob Sparrow, 7 October 2025, "Would you watch a film starring an AI actress?" ABC Radio National, https://www.abc.net.au/listen/program... ** Cave art did come before writing (i.e., text); some believe it was an early form or writing. While the exact origin of text is difficult to determine, the creation of art and symbols on cave walls by early humans, is said to have provided a foundation for written communication and recorded information in a visual way long before alphabets and more complex writing systems emerged. Speech it is long accepted, came before cave art.

Transcript

Host (Tegan Taylor):

“Here's looking at you, kid.”

“I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.”

“What? Like it's hard?”

There's a reason why I am not a Hollywood actor, but there is something magic about an iconic movie moment where you watch the performer deliver a classic line and the reactions of the others on screen.

So, what changes if these lines aren't uttered by real people, but by an AI entity?

Because the latest performer looking to break into Hollywood isn't human. It's AI.

It has a name: Tilly Norwood.

She's young, brunette, she has brown eyes, and what sounds like an English accent. And she has a showreel. It sees her fleeing explosions, preparing to fight a monster, and having a romantic moment in a historic drama.

But yes, she's an AI-generated creation made by an artificial intelligence talent studio. And the studio CEO says a lot of entertainment companies are interested in signing deals with Tilly.

Not surprisingly, actual human stars like Emily Blunt and Whoopi Goldberg are not keen. And the Hollywood union SAG-AFTRA has denounced it as having no life experience and no emotion.

But the real question is: what do audiences think?

How do AI performers affect living, breathing creatives? And really, would you buy a ticket to see an AI star on the big screen?

I'd love to know if it would change your mind about buying a ticket, or make you hit pause and choose something else to watch.

Do you care if the actors on your screen are AI or not?

Well, some of the people in showbiz to talk to me about it today are Katina Michael, a professor of technology, strategy and innovation and a visiting research scientist at the University of Sydney, and Robert Sparrow, a professor of philosophy at Macquarie University.

But I want to start with a voice who will probably sound familiar to you.

Singer and songwriter Karen Jacobson is the original Aussie voice of Apple's virtual assistant, Siri.

Hey, Karen.

Karen Jacobson:

Uh, good day. How are you doing?

Host:

I feel like I want to ask you, like, what the square root of 91 is or something like that.

Tell me about the idea of being a human who kind of became an AI.

Karen Jacobson:

You know, I'm listening to your question that you're asking the audience and I'm so distracted by that because I think—and I'd love to just answer that from my perspective first of all—which is, of course, the audience is going to buy a ticket.

The curiosity is huge.

But I think the question I'm coming from is: what kind of society do we want to be?

Do we want to respect and honour art from actual human beings or not?

And there's so much to say about how our systems are setting us up to not value that.

So many of the creative arts have been devalued in the past ten years. And, you know, is that the kind of society we want to be, that we don't value that anymore?

Host:

So, you became the voice of Siri. I'd love to get you to sort of unpack what that process was like, because you draw parallels between what you've experienced and how this character of Tilly Norwood was created.

Karen Jacobson:

Absolutely.

So, I am originally from Mackay in North Queensland. I always had a dream to move to America, and I did that to become a professional singer and songwriter.

Along the way, after arriving in New York City, I was asked to audition for a role. They were looking for a native Australian female voice-over artist living in the northeast of the United States.

I went to the audition, got the job, recorded for 50 hours to create a voice system based on my speaking voice.

And that voice system has ultimately ended up in billions of smartphones and GPS systems and elevators and cruise ships and software applications around the world, giving people directions, telling them where to go and what to do.

Well, I'm here with you right now.

Host:

What did you know at the time about how big it was going to be?

Karen Jacobson:

Oh, well, that's a big no. Absolutely not.

At the time this occurred, there was no GPS in general everyday life. It had been used and developed in the military, but not in civilian life.

Host:

Well, also with me is Katina Michael, who's a professor of technology, strategy and innovation at the University of Sydney.

Katina, you also have a personal connection to this story as well, don't you?

Katina Michael:

I do, in many different facets.

I have a son who's a budding actor, starting out, and he's done his time as an extra, gone into theatre in different ways.

As we know, for many young people trying to find their feet in the acting world, a lot of these very competitive opportunities go to very few people.

So, the landscape is changing markedly, and it's affecting many different people in the workflow, whether it's the pipeline regarding editors, actors, producers, creatives, writers, graphic designers, visual-effects artists or musicians.

It's affecting everybody.

Host:

This AI—you've got alarm bells going off in a bunch of different parts of your brain here, and it's something that you've been looking at for a while now.

When did the alarm bell start to ring for you?

Katina Michael:

Well, I think perhaps from the beginning.

We can talk about cave art for a moment and look at how we expressed ourselves before speech became apparent.

But today, I think we can point to computer-generated imagery, CGI, when we looked at how real human actors could actually craft every part of a script in detail and then have that perhaps semi-animated onto the real screen.

And then we did see the entry of AI into things like Netflix.

Many of our viewers and listeners wouldn't realise when they're watching Netflix, they're watching perhaps original content that has been edited by AI.

So, it's already here.

But I think when CGI came onto the fore, before the sort of transformer models, I realised, okay, this art is changing.

Host:

Robert, your field is the ethics of AI.

Let's think about us hungry consumers first. Do we have a right to know what we're watching?

Robert Sparrow:

We do have a right to know. The question is whether we care.

We're going to the cinema to watch something very imaginative. We want to be lost in another world.

And many of these AI startup companies are saying that they're world-building companies—that they're there for enabling creative work to be put into everyday hands.

So, they're making accessible the art of creating a movie to everyone who's got a good story to tell. Almost democratising this process of generating an AI-generated movie.

But the question is whether audiences really care.

We do know in some AI agents that are now called AI actors that there are no disclaimers.

For example, on an Instagram page, Tilly Norwood doesn't have a disclaimer right on the front of her page saying she's not real. But in the actual posts on her account, there are obvious disclaimers.

But do we really care is the question—and should we care?

As our protagonist here, Karen, has mentioned to us already, we should.

Host:

I'm also with Robert Sparrow, who's a professor of philosophy at Macquarie University.

Robert, you say the idea of discussing what's real in the context of movies is an interesting concept. Talk to me about this.

Robert Sparrow:

I do think people are media literate enough not to think that everything they see on the screen is real.

You know, there's a sense that it's acting. It's not as though George Clooney or Brad Pitt are actually international assassins, lawyers or whatever it is they're playing.

Unless it's a documentary, we're expecting it to be fictional.

And now we're familiar with the idea that some of the characters are computer-generated, that editing software has been used to remove objects or add explosions.

So, I do think there are contexts where it's really important that people are aware that what they're seeing is completely made up.

But if you're going to see a film for entertainment, I'm not sure you need a disclaimer every time a computer program has been involved in the production.

Host:

What about the actors themselves, though?

Because I feel like there's a sort of mutually agreed suspension of disbelief with movies. Like, yes, the explosions aren't real. Yes, the aliens didn't really invade Earth.

But there is sort of an expectation that when something is about really depicting humanity, and how a human might react in a situation, that the actor there is human.

There's an assumption the actor would be a human.

Robert Sparrow:

Look, already some of the actors aren't human.

I think we need to understand this as essentially cartoons. This is an animation technology, and it's getting to the point now where it can represent anything that a human being can represent.

And so what I think we're seeing is a shift in the artistry from the actor to the character designer, the editor and the director.

I think those people will be capable of expressing emotions and experiences for an audience through the computer-generated actors that they bring to the screen.

I don't think often the actors actually have the experience that they're portraying.

You know, they've never lost a loved one to an alien invasion. So, they're making it up.

I think in the future the designers, producers, editors and writers will be playing more of a role, and then that will be realised by AI-generated animation.

Host:

You're listening to Life Matters here on ABC Radio National.

I'm Tegan Taylor, asking you whether you would like to see AI stars on the big screen, or if it would change your mind about purchasing a ticket or pressing play on your streaming service.

One listener says:

"AI actors would respond better to direction. I'd watch this movie, but I wouldn't attend a movie that was directed by AI."

Karen in Hobart says:

"All for AI."

The big actors get paid too much anyway, like most CEOs.

Jenny's also invoking cost, saying the tickets would have to be very cheap as it's not an actor who needs to get paid for the role.

Karen, this sort of raises an interesting question about remuneration. Can you talk to me about the power imbalance between human performers and the companies that are creating these performers?

Karen Jacobson:

I was fascinated to hear about Katina's child being an actor. My son is also about to start out in the industry.

And again, the devaluing of the creative human input has been well underway for a long time.

I consider myself the poster child for artist exploitation with my experience.

And I have absolutely no idea when and where my speaking voice will show up anywhere in the world, including in real-life robots, which is beyond creepy to think that the technology has gone where it has.

The AI actor-like form is not only created by the technology. It is often based on something like an amalgamation of actors' likenesses.

And one of the most important questions I want to be asking is: what kind of remuneration are those original performers receiving, and what kind of royalties are they receiving that they are a part of this newly created entity?

And this is what the big union strikes in the creative fields in the United States over the last couple of years have been specifically about.

This is wiping out sectors of the industry.

Background actors, for example: bringing in a bunch of background actors for one day, putting them on a green screen, having them sit, having them stand, having them chat to each other, and never needing them again because of technology.

It's wiping out an entire sector of the industry.

This kind of thing is going on day in and day out, or being dreamed of.

And the power imbalance and the shift to the tech executives, as opposed to the creative group and the collaboration, is a fast-moving train downhill.

And as a creative, that is very sad to me.

Host:

Katina, it strikes me that Tilly Norwood is the perfect PR vehicle.

We're talking about it because almost because we put a face on it.

But actors are the front-facing, literal faces of movies. There's so many people behind the scenes: special-effects artists, makeup artists, editors.

What are the concerns about those less visible parts of the movie machine?

Katina Michael:

Well, when we look at this change in workflow and disintermediation, what we're seeing are startups galore in this industry.

And it's about either replacement or augmentation, but where we're pitching this is more transformation.

So, replacement could be: I animate instead of using a human.

CGI might have dictated that we get lots of human actors in a particular scene to do a particular action, and we grab that and generate something augmented.

And transformation is really this new AI content.

But the IP question being raised here is very important.

A lot of these startups are saying, "Well, it's not our issue. Technology is moving quickly and we're just jumping on the bandwagon to embrace this change."

One of the things we can do is, as Karen said, remunerate our actors at every part of this workflow.

And one of the issues being raised at the moment is the scraping of data from videos that are generated by everyday people on YouTube, on TikTok, on Instagram.

And large organisations are being held accountable to terms and conditions.

We had OpenAI CTO Mira Murati basically say she didn't know what data OpenAI's models and visual models were being trained on. She stopped mid-sentence talking to Bloomberg.

But then, last year, we saw Neal Mohan, the CEO of YouTube, bounce back and say, well, if you're using our data and haven't talked to us, you better talk to us.

So, the platforms are having a field day.

Copyright is a real thing, for people who are current actors and deceased.

People are now starting to talk to estates of the deceased to bring them back to life through AI.

It's complicated, but it's not enough to shift the blame or point the finger and say it's the toolmaker's problem or the artist's problem.

This is a blockchain problem, potentially.

Every time my voice is used, every time my trademark is used, every time my video content from TikTok that I created is used, should I be remunerated as the original creator?

The answer is yes.

But how will this happen?

Host:

Robert, what do organisations owe individuals in this system when it comes to the use of their data?

Robert Sparrow:

So, the first thing they owe them is transparency.

And I think they probably owe them a small share of the profits would be ideal.

Unfortunately, this has been—I mean, the recent history of AI has been to get people to contribute their photos, their text messages, their videos because they think it's fun or it's a way of sharing experiences with their friends.

No one is reading the small print that says all of this data is going to be used to model the kind of products that you might buy, to sell to advertisers, but now to actually generate large language models or video models.

So, there is a sense here in which people should have known that when they were putting all this stuff online, they were losing a certain amount of control over what was built on that basis.

But clearly there is something immoral in, for instance, replicating a particular individual's image and using that to make a new advertisement or a new film.

In cases like that, I think it's quite clear that these companies need people's consent, and they should be having a conversation with them about the distribution of the spoils.

Host:

On the text line, Matthew says:

"When the dust settles, movies made by people featuring real actors will become the premium product and will pay for that quality. Similar to live performance, you pay for the privilege."

Well, Karen, Katina, Robert, thank you all so much for joining me today.

Singer Karen Jacobson is the Aussie voice of Apple's virtual assistant, Siri.

Katina Michael is professor of technology, strategy and innovation and a visiting research scientist at the University of Sydney.

And Robert Sparrow is professor of philosophy at Macquarie University.

ABC RN helps you understand the world.