As long as we have our artists, our art remains ours – and safe – right? Well, looking at how AI is infiltrating the entertainment industry today, one can only hope that it does.
Don’t be mistaken, this isn’t a mere thought laced with pessimism. In fact, I, as singer Louis Tomlinson would put it, had Faith in the Future. However, when one continues to notice the chokehold AI has on the entertainment industry and its subsequent impact on pop culture today, the said faith starts to dissipate almost as quickly as a human’s cognitive skills when they rely on artificial intelligence far too much.
This, in turn, leads to a myriad of questions. Isn’t creativity an inherently human trait? So why are creative professionals, of all people, turning to AI today? And by doing so, are they lighting the pyre of their own imagination and originality?
Look, I turned a blind eye when the world decided to deplete natural resources just to transform themselves into miniatures of their favourite dolls and action figures or to get Studio Ghibli-style images, but what happens when an esteemed actor like James Earl Jones, the man who voiced Darth Vader in the sci-fi film franchise Star Wars, allows artificial intelligence recreate his voice, or a music giant like Spotify lets a fully AI-generated band gain millions of streams?
It paves the way for a new generation of filmmakers, actors and musicians to come up with deeply unsettling ideas that belong only in dystopian sci-fi shows such as Black Mirror. Exhibit A: Tilly Norwood, the world’s first-ever AI-generated actor.
Tilly Norwood: The unreal AI actor with a very real impact on the entertainment industry
Tilly Norwood was introduced to the world earlier in July 2025 by Particle6, a production company founded by Eline Van der Velden, a Dutch actor and comedian. Introduced to the world through an Instagram reel, Van der Velden at the time called it “satire”. But if you ask me, the joke stopped being funny when two months later, she suggested that Norwood was ready to sign with an agency.
Why should an AI-generated actor be given an artistic opportunity that thousands of young, aspiring human actors fight tooth and nail for? According to the BBC, Van der Velden hopes Norwood would become the “next Scarlett Johansson”.
Has the film industry fraternised with Tilly Norwood yet?
Hollywood isn’t too impressed by their new colleague. In fact, her arrival has caused quite a digital firestorm in the industry. According to The Guardian, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) condemned Norwood’s unveiling as “jeopardising performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry”, while Oscar-nominated actress Emily Blunt called the AI star “terrifying”.
But of course, an AI actor isn’t the only problem tormenting the entertainment industry today. Thanks to artificial intelligence, a disturbing new trend has entered the creative space in recent times, and by the looks of it, this unwelcomed guest is here to stay. Yes, we are referring to digital cloning and deepfake videos.
The rise of the dead: Why is the world so obsessed with digital cloning?
In 2024, AI technology firm Soul Machines debuted Digital Marilyn, their new chatbot, at the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival. As the name suggests, this AI chatbot is a digital reincarnation of the late Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe.
Soul Machines describes this chatbot as a digital person that translates Monroe’s spark into the new age, and according to Rolling Stone magazine, it is specifically designed to interact with Monroe’s fans in her “signature voice and style.”
While it is obviously disheartening to see a film festival — an event which is designed to celebrate creativity and foster dialogue between real human beings — allow for this to happen in the first place, the creation of Digital Monroe raises a series of questions. Wasn’t Monroe dehumanised enough while she was alive? Why do we now need to turn her into a “digital person”?
Unfortunately, Monroe isn’t the only celebrity who has been digitally resurrected in recent times. In October 2025, deepfakes of the late Academy Award-winning actor Robin Williams started making the rounds on the internet, leading to public outrage by AI critics and his daughter Zelda Williams.
In an emotional statement shared on her Instagram, Zelda highlighted the horrors of deepfakes.
Zelda has never shied away from criticising AI. In fact, she has been brutally vocal about her strong dislike for it long before she saw the tasteless deepfakes of her father, like the time when she compared artificial intelligence to Frankenstein’s monster.
But in the entertainment industry, AI doesn’t just target the deceased. Taylor Swift, too, has found herself at the receiving end of this malicious tool multiple times in the last two years.
In January 2024, sexually explicit deepfakes of Swift first saw the light of day. These unsettling AI-generated images naturally caused public outrage, and at the time, Swift was reportedly weighing legal action against the user who shared the offensive images on X. But that’s not all.
Later that year, in August, the singer once again found herself in the crosshairs of artificial intelligence when President Donald Trump shared a series of AI-generated images that showed her fans wearing T-shirts that read “Swifties for Trump” as part of an electoral campaign.
Back then, Swift clapped back with an Instagram post, where she not only endorsed Kamala Harris but also openly addressed the looming danger of AI.
Swift wrote, “Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation.”
One might think that Hollywood would steer clear of artificial intelligence when its own celebrities make it a point to speak out against the downsides of generative AI. Yet, we have many prominent filmmakers who have incorporated this technology in their creative process.
How is Hollywood reacting to AI?
While filmmakers and showrunners aren’t completely relying on artificial intelligence just yet, its usage is becoming more mainstream by the minute.
Most recently, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (2024), starring Adrien Brody, caused a massive uproar after Corbet revealed that he had used artificial intelligence in his film to “improve” Hungarian language dialogue performances of Brody and Felicity Jones. But the American filmmaker and actor isn’t the only creative genius to have used AI.
Before the release of The Brutalist, director Fede Alvarez faced similar backlash for utilising CGI and AI in Alien: Romulus (2024) to create Rook, the science officer who bore an uncanny resemblance to the late actor Ian Holm.
Marvel, too, has faced its fair share of criticism over using generative AI in both its films as well as TV series such as Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) and Secret Invasion (2023).
When a powerhouse like Marvel, which has a whole universe of superheroes to its name, succumbs to artificial intelligence, who remains to fight the war against generative AI? Well, as they say, not all heroes wear capes – and Guillermo del Toro is one of them.
The Academy Award-winning filmmaker has an obvious disdain for generative AI, and he has been vocal about it, too. Speaking to NPR, the filmmaker bluntly said that he would “rather die” than use artificial intelligence, “particularly generative AI,” in any of his future films.
James Cameron, the director of blockbuster films such as Titanic (1997) and the Avatar franchise, too, is of the opinion that AI has no place in the entertainment industry. According to a Variety report, he said, “They can make up an actor. They can make up a performance from scratch with a text prompt… that’s horrifying to me.”
Another renowned name against artificial intelligence is Vince Gilligan, the award-winning creator of Apple TV’s latest hit dark comedy drama Pluribus (2025–). Speaking to Deadline about his newest series, Gilligan said that he simply does not care for artificial intelligence.
He added, “When your selling point is: ‘This thing is great, it’ll write your high school essays for you, it’ll create your artwork for you if you’re an artist, so you don’t have to actually learn how to draw and paint anymore … You don’t ever need to learn how to read a map or use a compass … this thing will wipe your butt for you.’ What’s left to live for? The creative spark in human beings — it’s one of the most precious, wonderful things we have. What is more important than being creative?”
Gilligan is right, isn’t he? Art, music and literature are all narrative structures that help humans understand and comfort each other. Our creativity is what makes us truly unique, and the second we let someone snatch that from us, we have nothing left to our names.
How is AI remixing the music industry?
How many times have you found yourself listening to a song on loop just because the lyrics made you feel “understood”?
Singers, like other artists, create a deep connection with us by expressing feelings that we recognise in ourselves. When a fan hears their favourite musician sing about an experience they thought only they had lived through, it allows the listener to feel seen and comforted.
But what happens when a global music streaming platform such as Spotify hands over the microphone to AI-generated artists such as The Velvet Sundown without any disclaimers? It causes listeners to feel duped.
And maybe that’s why it is valid for Taylor Swift’s fans to feel the way they did when they found out that their favourite artist allegedly created promotional videos for her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, using generative AI. Or when Calum Worthy, a former Disney star, co-founded 2wai, a dystopian app that wants to help grieving people “reconnect” to the ones they have lost by digitally resurrecting them.
In the caption of the promotional video Worthy has posted to his X (formerly Twitter), he asks us, “What if the loved ones we’ve lost could be part of our future?”
What if the loved ones we’ve lost could be part of our future? pic.twitter.com/oFBGekVo1R
— Calum Worthy (@CalumWorthy) November 11, 2025
And to that, I have a question of my own: Have any of the loved ones consented to this?
If there is one thing that is truly scarier than AI-generated people, it is their very human developers who fail to see the dangers of their own creation.
As Kitty Oppenheimer, Emily Blunt’s character from Oppenheimer (2023), says, “You don’t get to commit sin, and then ask all of us to feel sorry for you when there are consequences.”
(Hero image credit: The Velvet Sundown/@thevelvetsundownband and Tilly Norwood/@tillynorwood via Instagram; Featured image credit: Tilly Norwood/@tillynorwood via Instagram)
Note : The information in this article is accurate as of the date of publication.