What Can I Get You Sir?

Surprise, surprise!  The first full AI actor created by the boys of Silicon Valley is an actress.  Who would have thought it?  Tilly Norwood’s career, launched at the beginning of October, has apparently been described by them thus:-  “This is a young woman who will do whatever we  say, whatever  we want,” and some Hollywood agents have already expressed an interest in representing her!

If you were in any doubt that AI was a threat to actors’ work opportunities you must be convinced now, especially if you are an actress older than Tilly, who looks in her very early twenties.   With the issue of combatting  stereotyping in the media seeming more daunting than ever and the rise of Girlfriend Apps to help men uncomfortable with human contact to have a virtual relationship, this is chilling, is it not? 

Tilly is seen on YouTube, fresh, young, attractive, softly reaching out to you sometimes over her shoulder, with gently provocative looks.  Malleable.  Not real flesh and blood  women the likes of  Andrew Tate wants to silence and control, who should, according to him ‘Make the coffee and shut the f..k up.’

If I were unhappy before Tilly’s inception with the prospect of any improvement in my acting career at my advanced age, I am now facing utter despair with the direction the use of analytical tools (AI) are being used in project development for financing, audience analysis and specifically in storylines and casting.

When I left Emmerdale I was in my early fifties although I know most viewers were unaware of that.  I have done very little television work since.   You were thought too old at barely 35  then to be considered for casting, a situation activism over the past two decades within Equity has certainly improved for some older women. 

Theatre was my career lifeline again,  and I did love it, especially when playing Alan Ayckbourn’s female wonderful characters, like saucy Fay Hubbard seen here in Chorus of Disapproval at York Theatre Royal. Heaven! 

A Chorus of Disapproval

But the improvements in gender equality are always subject to fluctuations and if story narrative and casting in film and TV are decided by status quo data, not on the hope of progress in the  true representation of the population - ALL ages and diversities - will there be a fulfilling career possible, especially for women to have in the recorded media?

The one good thing I can see is that to work in Theatre may be elevated to hold a more important place than it has tended to have since cinema, then Television,  became the money making part of our industry.

Humanity loves a good story, told well, with opportunities from it to understand ourselves as human beings better.  To be inspired, enraptured, hopeful.  And to know that other human beings are telling it.

Jean Rogers