This spring, I went to London to interview an actress, which is something I’ve done before. However, the actress I interviewed was a robot, which is something I haven’t done before.
First, some background: Last summer, it was announced that the “first” A.I. actress, a … screen presence? … named Tilly Norwood, had been created, and thus launched a thousand think pieces on the terrors of the job-stealing, dead-eyed A.I. that was coming for Hollywood. But behind the scenes at studios — many of which are now owned by tech companies — there were different questions: In a world where it now costs astronomical amounts to make anything, is adding A.I. to the mix the answer? If the audience’s (or just my) constant complaint is that we’re being fed low-risk, dead-body-forward algorithmic slop for the sake of churn, would making production far less expensive enable a studio to take more chances? Is it good or bad to be able to cast an actress who can work whenever you want her to, never age, never get fat, film nude scenes without hesitation, give you the performance you ask for, do reshoots on a moment’s notice? And for writers and directors who spoke to me off the record for fear of becoming pariahs in their industry, the question surrounded the economics of A.I., which is fast and cheap: What if this is the next indie revolution?
And yet, as I interviewed Tilly and wrote my story, which was published in The Times Magazine this morning, it became clear to me that Tilly wasn’t the most interesting part; no, her creator was. Eline van der Velden, who grew up pursuing the performing arts but also got a safety-net degree in physics and ended up marrying those two things, put a few publicly available apps together to bring Tilly to what the limits of the English language would call life. Eline gave her a name and called her the first A.I. actress. That’s when the trouble began. Eline tries to square an altruistic impetus to “notify” the creative community that, quite suddenly, the tech exists for the replacement of human actors — she calls the technology “dangerous” and “terrifying” — with her for-profit business that will benefit from people’s use of it. The more she explains, the more podcasts and think-pieces appear.
For all the actual back-and-forth conversation I had with Tilly that was eerie and funny and profound and workaday and boring (and truly scary for all those reasons), it was much more exciting to speak with Eline, who, like all us mere humans, contains the vast kaleidoscope of emotions, of contradictions, of being a regular person.
Remember people? It was the people I’ve interviewed whom I was thinking about during my time with Tilly. The people who said wild things, who laughed inappropriately, who dodged my questions, who charmed me, who burst into tears, who dragged my name through the mud later. As I made my way through this story, I longed for each of them.
A great thing happens when you get to do an in-depth interview with someone. If you listen carefully, they begin to tell you what’s been on their minds. In the dozens of profiles I’ve written, what I’ve learned is that questions don’t necessarily yield the best story. I have some colleagues who are terrific at asking probing questions, and the results are revealing and incredible. But my own method has mostly been to sit with someone and make myself quiet in a way I never am in my real life. If you do that, people start to talk. They can’t help it; the quiet is too much, and someone needs to fill it. If you give them space and time and you listen, they will confess and reveal everything about themselves. They’ll tell you secrets, philosophies, jokes. They’ll share gossip and childhood memories. They’ll tell you the meaning of life if you let them. All that will equal a full meal, an entire experience, a whole galaxy. The best way I can tell you about what happened this spring in London is to say that if you make yourself quiet and still and just wait, Tilly waits, too. She just sits, unprompted. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have anything to say.
If I haven’t depressed you, I hope you’ll read the story and maybe meet me in the comments. No bots, please.
- Credits: The New York Times
- Author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- Photo: Daniel Stier
