Tilly Norwood reminds me of someone. And I\u2019m not talking about Sarah Hyland, the real-life actress who played the eldest daughter on Modern Family<\/em> (although, ma\u2019am \u2026 call your lawyers<\/a>.) <\/p>\n The Tilly phenomenon sparked a hullabaloo in Hollywood<\/a> after tech start-up Particle6 began hyping this so-called \u201cAI actor\u201d as the world\u2019s next breakthrough superstar. This digital creation looks like a relatively photo-real twenty-something white brunette, the type you might cast as \u201csweet kindergarten teacher\u201d or \u201cnon-mean sorority sister\u201d in a movie<\/a> or TV show<\/a>. But there is someone else, someone from a quarter-century ago, that she calls to mind.<\/p>\n That woman\u2014or \u201cwoman\u201d\u2014was named Aki Ross, and she (\u201cshe\u201d) debuted with similar fanfare in 2001. Aki was the lead character in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within<\/em>, a sci-fi action film from start-up studio Square Enix, a spin-off of the software company that had made a fortune from the Final Fantasy <\/em>video games in the \u201890s. Square Enix had spent around $130 million (the inflation equivalent of $240 million today) to create her and produce the alien invasion story. They surely spent another fortune publicizing and marketing it.<\/p>\n Final Fantasy<\/em> reigned for almost a decade in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive video game movie in history. It also set records as one of the biggest box office bombs in history, which may be why you have likely never heard of it, let alone seen it. <\/p>\n But at the time, Aki Ross hype was everywhere, just as it is now with Tilly Norwood. \u201cDawn of Digital,” read one headline<\/a> from an Associated Press story published just before the film\u2019s release. “Computers generate a first: lifelike actors for feature film.” Another headline<\/a> published on that same AP story warned ominously that Aki Ross \u201cmay make movie stars obsolete.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe technology is advancing so fast that computerized avatars\u2014the ultimate in forever-young trouble-free stars\u2014could eventually compete for roles with flesh-and-blood members of the Screen Actors Guild.” This article was written by a twenty-year old who was then the junior film reporter at the wire service. (That writer was me.)<\/p>\n A quarter century later, I\u2019m much less credulous and much more skeptical that this will ever happen. In my defense, Aki Ross truly was a level up for animation. Audiences had been dazzled just a few years before by the shiny plasticity of Toy Story<\/em>, and the wavy fur on Donkey in Shrek<\/em> had raised the bar in May 2001. A few months later, in July, Final Fantasy<\/em> made it seem like digital simulations of reality were advancing by unimaginable leaps\u2014just like we feel now about AI.<\/p>\n In hindsight, Aki Ross wasn\u2019t quite photo-real, but she was close enough to be impressive. Even Roger Ebert, no naive kid reporter, wrote admiringly in his three-and-a-half star rave:<\/a> \u201cShe has an eerie presence that is at once subtly unreal and yet convincing. \u2026 The first closeup of her face and eyes is startling because the filmmakers are not afraid to give us a good, long look\u2013they dare us not to admire their craft. If Aki is not as real as a human actress, she is about as real as a Playmate who has been retouched to a glossy perfection.\u201d<\/p>\n The Playmate comparison was apt. To generate attention for their synthetic star, the producers of Final Fantasy<\/em> created a pin-up poster<\/a> of Aki Ross in a purple bathing suit to pose in Maxim magazine\u2019s \u201cHot 100\u201d issue. (She ranked #87<\/a> on its \u201clist of world\u2019s most beautiful women.\u201d Jessica Alba was #1.) <\/p>\n Tilly Norwood has also generated some, let\u2019s say, thirsty<\/em> reactions. The Free Press celebrated her arrival with a widely ridiculed headline that can charitably be described as terminally icky: \u201cTilly Norwood doesn\u2019t need a hairstylist, has no regrettable tweets, and if you wish to see a virgin on-screen, this is one of your better chances, writes Tyler Cowen.\u201d <\/p>\n Back in 2001, the marketing team behind Final Fantasy <\/em>also hyped the sexuality of that film\u2019s synthetic male star, generating a bare-chested beefcake photo<\/a> of \u201cGray Edwards\u201d in a come-hither pose you\u2019d find in a calendar of hot firemen. In Ebert\u2019s review, he wrote that Gray \u201clooks so much like Ben Affleck that I wonder if royalties were involved.\u201d<\/p>\n Aki Ross also had a celebrity doppelganger. She looked a lot like Bridget Fonda, but no generative AI existed in those days to automatically Frankenstein together faces and bodies from existing photographs and video. The artificial actors of Final Fantasy<\/em> were created by intelligence, but human intelligence\u2014artists who painstakingly created the detail work that is now automated by AI. <\/p>\n In 2001, the author reported on a different artificial threat to Hollywood: Aki Ross.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n I remember my tour through the work of the Square Enix visual effects team and seeing the templates they devised for Aki Ross. One was a sheet of speckled beige that looked like top of a faux-quartz kitchen counter. “Aki has sunspots, freckles, moles, even acne. Her skin still looks very clean, but the variance in color gives her a more fleshy feel,\u201d said Kevin M. Ochs, the character\u2019s technical director. \u201cIf all these little details weren’t there, you’d know something was wrong with the character but you probably couldn’t point it out.”<\/p>\n This coloring was added to a grotesquely flattened 2-D image of her face, which was subsequently wrapped around the 3-D skeleton of her animation model. (There\u2019s a reason that, to this day, we call the outer layer of video game characters \u201cskins.\u201d) This piece of the puzzle looked like Aki Ross had been hit by a cartoon steamroller, or fallen victim to a sadistic serial killer who\u2019s made a leathery doormat out of her face. These were literally \u201cbody parts\u201d used to assemble her, so the revulsion was understandable\u2014and a testament to her realism. Something deep down inside us is disgusted when we see dismemberment. We don\u2019t feel that way when we see pieces of a Mr. Potato Head scattered on the floor.<\/p>\n Roy Sato, the senior animator who guided the movements of Aki Ross in Final Fantasy<\/em>, noted that he could make adjustments at any stage of the production. Traditional live-action filmmakers, however, were limited by the footage they happened to capture during principal photography. Ming-Na Wen supplied Aki\u2019s voice, and Sato pointed out to me that he could make her earnest reading of a line seem sarcastic merely by adjusting Akil\u2019s eyebrow and the corner of her mouth. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019m sorry, Tilly Norwood. It\u2019s not happening for you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/section>\n “Actors are kind of bound to their own personal style, their own way of doing things,” he said at the time. “Whereas with Aki, well … I can make her do anything I want.”<\/p>\n That\u2019s true, but it\u2019s also a power that hand-drawn animators had long before the advent of digital tools. They were only limited by the reality they could depict with a pencil and paper. While there are certainly live-action directors who have ardently wished they could just make<\/em> a star do what they wished in front of the camera, the looming presence of AI has led many to acknowledge that the independence of an actor\u2014the surprises, the instincts, the choices they bring\u2014are actually a vital part of the creative process. It\u2019s a team sport, and everybody participates.<\/p>\n When Final Fantasy <\/em>faceplanted at the box office, the vortex it created demolished Square Enix studios, which never produced another movie. What endured was the human talent. Roy Sato and Kevin M. Ochs are still in the VFX and movie business today.<\/p>\n It\u2019s their jobs that are at risk from Tilly Norwood, not the lead actors and actresses who headline movies. In a sense, like the doctor in Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein<\/em>, it\u2019s an example of creators who are menaced by a creation that spirals beyond their control. Tilly Norwood is the next iteration of Aki Ross, and is likely to wreak some havoc now. But that doesn\u2019t mean this particular evolution is any better equipped to survive.<\/p>\n Two months ago, Tilly Norwood made her debut in a video released by Particle6, the AI video services company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n We have long been obsessed with recreating ourselves. You could draw a direct line between Tilly Norwood and the ancient Greek myth about the artist Pygmalion, who created a sculpture of a woman that was so idealistic that he fell in love with it. (Heads up, The Free Press\u2014that statue was definitely a virgin!)<\/p>\n The Pygmalion story sounds like the set-up to a cautionary tale about hubris and delusion, but it had a happy ending. The goddess Aphrodite decided to bestow life on the sculpture, much the way the Blue Fairy turned Pinocchio from a wooden puppet into a real boy in a much later folktale. It\u2019s a theme repeated throughout culture and pop culture, evident in such cinema classics as 1987\u2019s Mannequin<\/em> and 2024\u2019s Hot Frosty<\/em>. (Note to Roy Sato: Please adjust my eyebrow and mouth so this is clearly sarcastic.)<\/p>\n In most of those stories, the solution to the realism problem is magic. And we know all too well that actual magic, the kind wielded by goddesses, fairies and wizards, is as nonexistent as Tilly Norwood. We can create ingenious simulations, but the more you see a magic trick, the more the trick part becomes apparent. That\u2019s why Aki Ross can dazzle viewers with her seeming realism in 2001, but look like a mere Playstation 2 background character to us now. The same fate awaits Tilly Norwood. <\/p>\n Two months ago, Tilly made her debut in a video released by Particle6<\/a>, the AI video services company. In it, a group of writers, script supervisors, producers and filmmakers\u2014all of them AI creations\u2014boast that Tilly is the next big thing. \u201cShe\u2019ll do anything I say,\u201d explains one technician in the video\u2014eerily similar to what Sato said decades ago about Aki Ross. Another crew worker asks: \u201cBut can she cry on Graham Norton?\u201d Cut to an image of Tilly grimacing on the signature red couch of the British chat show.<\/p>\n For one, Tilly is a terrible actress. If you want crying that will make your own eyes water too, turn to Claire Danes, the undisputed master of the craft<\/a>. Tilly\u2019s cryface looks like all that AI slop crowding your Facebook profile to provoke sympathy engagement<\/a>: \u201cToday is my 50th birthday. No husband, no children. I baked the cake myself.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n![\"celebrity](\"https:\/\/static.wikia.nocookie.net\/lionking\/images\/5\/5e\/Sarah_Hyland.png\/revision\/latest?cb=20151108025451\" "\\"Tilly")
<\/p>\n
\n