AI Actor Tilly Norwood's Song Crowned 'Worst Ever

The introduction of Particle6's AI-generated "actor," Tilly Norwood, last autumn, was met with considerable disapproval within Hollywood circles.

Golden Globe laureate Emily Blunt, speaking to industry publication Variety, voiced her alarm, stating, “Good Lord, we’re screwed,” and implored, “Come on, agencies, don’t do that. Please stop.”

Contrary to Blunt's plea, Particle6 proceeded to release a music video for its AI character, featuring a song titled “Take the Lead.”

This is no exaggeration; a listen to the track reveals what the author considers to be the absolute worst song they have ever encountered.

The expectation for Norwood's musical debut was perhaps a sound akin to “How Was I Supposed to Know?”, the AI-generated track by digital persona Xania Monet, which garnered attention by appearing on the Billboard R&B charts. While Xania Monet's AI-generated music, even with purportedly human-written lyrics, doesn't appeal to the author's taste – who favors music independent of AI generators like Suno – Norwood's song, however, establishes an unprecedented benchmark for AI-induced discomfort.

Despite a team of eighteen individuals, including designers, prompters, and editors, contributing to the “Take the Lead” video, the song's narrative centers on Tilly's struggles as an AI-generated entity, facing underestimation from critics who dispute her humanity.

“They say it’s not real, that it’s fake,” Norwood proclaims assertively into the camera, adding, “But I am still human, make no mistake.”

This assertion, to state it mildly, lacks factual basis.

While music needn't resonate universally, a degree of individual relatability is often expected. The notable aspect of Norwood’s song is the AI character’s team’s success in crafting a narrative around an experience fundamentally inaccessible to human understanding—the sensation of being dismissed for one's artificial intelligence.

The track, bearing a resemblance to the style of Sara Bareillis, commences with the lyrics: “When they talk about me, they don’t see/The human spark, the creativity.” It progresses with Norwood’s self-affirmation, “I’m not a puppet, I’m the star.”

The chorus then emerges, featuring Norwood's direct appeal to her fellow AI actors:

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

Visually, Norwood is depicted confidently walking through a data center hallway, a sequence perhaps representing the video's sole touch of authenticity. As the second chorus begins, marked by a foreseeable key change, she transitions to a stage, surveying a stadium filled with an audience of fabricated cheering individuals, granting her an unwarranted moment of perceived “triumph.”

While one might contend that Norwood aims to engage actors universally, the song's outro unequivocally confirms its true nature as a rallying cry from Tilly to her AI counterparts:

Take your power, take the stage
The next evolution is all the rage
Unlock it all, don’t hesitate
AI Actors, we create our fate

Such content is utterly superfluous. There is no discernible need for music originating from an AI persona, directed at other AI personas, delivering an optimistic anthem about collective action to defy critical human perception.

Two decades prior, the esteemed music publication Pitchfork famously awarded Jet’s album “Shine On” a score of 0.0 out of 10, opting to embed a YouTube video of a monkey urinating into its own mouth instead of a traditional review. While the Jet album itself isn't considered abhorrent, Pitchfork editor Scott Plagenhoef elucidated in a 2024 interview the underlying frustration that fueled the writers’ strong reaction years ago.

Plagenhoef articulated his disappointment, stating, “Seeing mainstream rock music, which of course most of us had grown up with a fondness for, become so knuckle-dragging and Xeroxed was disappointing.”

These sentiments closely parallel the criticisms artists voice today regarding AI-generated creations – that such productions lack substance and merely replicate the work of previous artists.

Last fall, SAG-AFTRA, the union representing actors, issued a statement asserting, “‘Tilly Norwood’ is not an actor; it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation.” The union further elaborated that such an entity “has no life experience to draw from, no emotion and, from what we’ve seen, audiences aren’t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience. It doesn’t solve any ‘problem’ — it creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.”

Whereas Jet drew inspiration from established rock groups for its “knuckle-dragging and Xeroxed” sound, Tilly Norwood's existence is directly predicated on AI models developed using training data acquired from artists without their explicit consent.

In retrospect, the author believes Pitchfork's initial judgment on Jet was perhaps premature; two decades later, a truly deserving subject has emerged.