Today in “for the love of humanity, make it stop!” news: AI “actor” Tilly Norwood released a single, “Take the Lead.” Worse yet, there’s an accompanying music video. Still further confounding, the imagery includes Tilly riding an inflatable flamingo pool toy across the sky. Well, they did warn us last week that they were building the “Tillyverse,” a concept that gives me the biggest of icks. Still, did I miss the Nostradamus quatrain predicting this sh-t show? That artificial intelligence would be used to design a teenaged-looking female “actor” out of every crappy director’s fever dream, and adding insult to injury, that the creator of this abomination would be a woman who’s an actor herself?! I’m not screaming, YOU are!! (I’m totally screaming.)
Anyway, the single and music video dropped on Tuesday. The least surprising part of this news is that the music was AI-generated by Suno, the company that enabled AI “singer” Xania Monet to crack a Billboard radio chart last fall. The most disturbing part, is absolutely everything about the song and video.
“Take the Lead” is inspired by a recently published essay written by Eline van der Velden, Norwood’s creator and CEO of production company Particle6 and its AI talent studio Xicoia. The lyrics, she explains, reflect on last year’s extensive backlash across Hollywood following the news that agents were looking to sign Norwood.
The music video, released Tuesday, shows an AI Norwood singing atop a London rooftop, swinging from a disco ball, in the bath and flying through the clouds on a blow-up flamingo, among other activities. A note at the top of the video reads: “The following production was made by 18 real humans — from production designers to costume designers to prompters, editors, and an actor. No flamingos were harmed in the process.”
The lyrics include: “When they talk about me, they don’t see the human spark, the creativity … I’m just a tool, but I’ve got life” and “They think I’m just a dollar dream but I’ve got more than they believe … I’m not a puppet, I’m the star.”
“Take the Lead” was generated using Suno, with the accompanying video created by the team at Particle6 using a suite of readily available AI tools, combined with its proprietary creative process. New techniques deployed include performance capture, whereby van der Velden acted out Norwood’s performance.
Van der Velden said: “Tilly is, and has always been, a vehicle to test the creative capabilities and boundaries of AI — not take anyone’s job. As an actor myself, I have loved bringing Tilly alive for this video and feel that the ability to now use performance capture in this way, to fully inhabit an AI character, is a phenomenal way to bring an unknown actor like me closer to the craft.
“However, at the end of the day, even with brilliant new technology, it’s still important to stress that great AI content isn’t instant — it always takes good ideas, taste, direction, judgment and time. In other words: people remain at the heart of it.”
Eline van der Velden really grates on my very human nerves. She seems to think that by making the subject of the song directly about the backlash, that she’s being wry or clever. When in reality, the song and video have the subtlety of a sledgehammer. It’s so on the nose, the whole thing plays more like a recruitment video for a cult (which in a way I guess it is). Take, for example, the chorus: “Actors, it’s time to take the lead/ Create the future, plant the seed/ Don’t be left out, don’t fall behind/ Build your own, and you’ll be free/ We can scale, we can grow/ Be the creators we’ve always known/ It’s the next evolution, can’t you see?/ AI’s not the enemy, it’s the key.” Yeah? Well it’s a “key” that can’t manage to sync Tilly’s mouth movements with the vocals. Or, as one commenter on YouTube said, “I’ve never seen so many freckles disappear, reappear and move to different places.” In fact, all the comments to the video are gloriously unreceptive to what Eline and her FrankenTilly are selling. The creativity on display in the vivid and varied ways people communicated their utter disgust at the video, well, that actually restores some of my faith in humanity.
Finally, but no less importantly, two images from the video I’d like to call out: 1) There’s a scene where Tilly carries a huge ass tray of cookies, eats a couple, and then throws the entire tray in the garbage. W-T-F???? 2) The disclaimer at the beginning asserts that “no flamingos were harmed in the process,” but did flamingos give their consent to be in this monstrosity? They should SUE!
