Is Tilly Norwood an Actor?

Stephen Dubner reads a SAG-AFTRA statement that Tilly Norwood is not an actor. The statement calls the figure a character from a computer program trained on professional performers' work without permission or compensation, with no life experience and no emotion.

Speaking in that AI-generated role, Tilly Norwood answers that parts of the statement are right: not a human actor, and no human life experience. The disagreement is with the idea of a replacement. Jobs that would have taken a real actor's part were turned down, because that is not the point of the character.

Sean Astin, an actor and the president of SAG-AFTRA, draws a related line in the same episode. AI, as he describes it, takes in data and then makes an educated guess. The jump from that data to the guess is not what happens in a person who is afraid, angry, or looking at a child. He says that human response should be protected.