AI Talent Isn’t Coming To Hollywood—It’s Already Here

In September 2025 it seemed just like any other success story when Hollywood talent agents began circling around actress Tilly Norwood, until the industry realized that Tilly Norwood is an AI creation from tech entrepreneur Eline Van der Velden’s Xicoia studio. During the same month, Hallwood Media signed a $3 million record deal with AI music artist Xania Monet on the heels of her #1 hit single on the Billboard R&B Digital Song Sales chart. Both events served as a clear signal that the entertainment industry’s AI reckoning has officially moved from imminent threat to commercial reality.

The backlash was immediate. Actress Emily Blunt called Norwood’s emergence “really, really scary” and Whoopi Goldberg warned, “You won’t have any connection with AI performers.” SAG-AFTRA issued a pointed statement, expressing their belief that “creativity is, and should remain, human-centered.” However, beneath the outrage lies an uncomfortable truth about what’s really at stake: who controls and profits from the future of entertainment.

The Economics Are Brutally Simple

According to research from Morgan Stanley, studios have a clear financial incentive driving AI adoption. Media companies could see cost reductions of approximately 10% across the industry, with savings reaching as high as 30% in television and film production.

It’s apparent that AI threatens the replacement of human talent. The economic logic is inescapable: why negotiate with million-dollar actors when you can own the talent outright? Consider Van der Velden’s pitch for Tilly Norwood at the Zurich Summit where she announced her desire for Norwood to become “the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman.” Van der Velden wasn’t positioning Norwood as a complement to human artists; she was explicitly marketing a replacement for A-list human talent.

The assumption seems to be that AI talent never demands a raise, never ages out of roles and never says no to a project. However, no one seems to consider the people pulling the strings behind the AI talent. Will they act as managers or agents to negotiate on behalf of their clients, essentially creating the same market dynamics without human performers? If so, this becomes an exercise in futility that will eventually bring us back to the same cost issues we have today, the difference being that AI performers occupy the roles previously held by human talent. There is also the unanswered question around what would prevent studios from creating their own AI actors internally to cut out the middlemen.

When looking at the music industry, a parallel story is unfolding. AI music artist Xania Monet was created by Mississippi poet Telisha Jones using the Suno AI platform. Jones writes the lyrics based on her own life experiences, although the vocals are generated by Suno. Monet’s manager insists “there’s an artist behind it,” but that doesn’t answer the question of who created the value, the human or the AI platform? Like most music production, the value is created by the collaboration of multiple individuals. However, the complication arises when determining if and how to attribute the value generated by artificial intelligence.

Industry projections from a global study by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) paint a stark picture, predicting that music artists will lose nearly 24% of their income by 2028. The same study also predicts that AI-generated music will account for approximately 20% of traditional streaming platform revenue and 60% of music library revenue. Grand View Research forecasts that the market for AI in media and entertainment will grow from $25.98 billion in 2024 to $99.48 billion by 2030, showing that investors are betting on AI talent as entertainment’s future business model.

The Gender Question Nobody Wants To Confront

Actor Chelsea Edmundson gave voice to what many in Hollywood were thinking: “Not surprised that the first major AI actor is a young woman that they can fully control and make do whatever they want.” Tilly Norwood and Xania Monet are both young women designed, created and controlled by others, revealing an uncomfortable pattern. Actress Mara Wilson posed an obvious question about Norwood: “What about the hundreds of living young women whose faces were composited together to make her? You couldn’t hire any of them?”

This pattern isn’t a coincidence. Young women have historically been among the most scrutinized, replaceable, and economically vulnerable performers in entertainment. This is especially true for women of color. Creating “fully controlled” AI women represents the logical endpoint for an industry that has long sought to manage and monetize female talent without granting commensurate power.

Van der Velden, an actor and technologist herself, might argue that she is creating new opportunities for women in tech and media. However, the broader industry response suggests a more troubling reality: AI talent offers a way to bypass the messy reality of human performers who have opinions, boundaries and rights.

How Studios Quietly Shifted Their Position

The speed at which studios have capitulated exposes the power dynamics currently at play. According to Van der Velden’s statements at the Zurich Summit, studio executives dismissed AI talent entirely in February 2025, but by May 2025 their resistance had evaporated. The pattern mirrors how streaming platforms initially obscured viewership data to maintain negotiating leverage with talent and traditional studios: adopt transformative technology privately, establish it as industry standard and then negotiate from a position of strength.

SAG-AFTRA’s 118-day strike in 2023, which overlapped with the Writers Guild of America’s strike for the first time since 1960, was partially fought over AI protections. Despite the union securing provisions requiring informed consent and compensation for digital replicas, some union members argue that the language contains loopholes. According to contract language, remedies for unauthorized use are “limited to monetary damages,” which means companies could simply pay fines to continue using an actor’s digital likeness indefinitely.

The Consent Crisis At The Heart Of AI Talent

The continuation of the earlier SAG-AFTRA statement about Tilly Norwood identifies the core issue: she “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 fundamental ethical fault line is that AI systems don’t create from nothing. They are trained on existing human performances. Every facial expression, vocal inflection and gesture that makes AI talent appear realistic was “learned” from real actors whose work was ingested without consent or payment. One could argue that this resembles how human actors study to learn their craft. However, the key difference is scale and consent: human actors observe and reinterpret, while AI systems directly replicate and recombine performances without compensating the original performers or providing any means of legal recourse.

The current legal landscape remains nebulous. Suno, the platform behind AI singer Xania Monet, is facing copyright infringement lawsuits from major record companies, demonstrating that AI talent remains controversial within the industry. Despite this, AI in media and entertainment is expected to reach nearly $100 billion by 2030 based on investor belief that the industry can navigate or outlast legal challenges.

For working artists, the math is devastating. If your performance helped train the system that’s replacing you, you’ve essentially funded your own obsolescence without compensation. According to The Hollywood Reporter, some actors report being pressured to consent to digital replica creation as a condition of employment, even for minor roles. An emerging actor desperate for credits has little leverage to refuse when a major production asks for digital scanning rights.

The Democratization Paradox

One of the more prevalent and nuanced questions is whether AI talent democratizes or concentrates opportunity. Telisha Jones, Xania Monet’s creator, comes from humble beginnings in Olive Branch, Mississippi. Although she grew up singing in church, Jones describes herself as not being a “vocal beast” like Xania. The AI tool allowed her to create professional-quality recordings from home and reach Billboard charts, something potentially impossible through traditional industry gatekeeping.

From the perspective of creators trying to break into the industry, AI tools give outsiders a fighting chance. Why should access to a recording career require connections, geography or conventional vocal training? Telisha Jones writes 90% of Xania’s material from her own life. If the lyrics and stories are authentic, does it matter if AI generates the voice?

Producer Timbaland, who backs Suno and signed his own AI artist, argues that AI “embodies a genuine soul right now” and allows “expression of true feelings.” He’s betting that audiences care more about emotional resonance than technical authenticity, though his view doesn’t address the broader market impact.

AI might help some outsiders break into the industry, but it also gives established studios and labels tools to circumvent human performers. The question isn’t whether talented individuals can use AI creatively. Instead, it’s whether the aggregate effect empowers or replaces working artists. Data from sources like CISAC and Morgan Stanley suggests the latter.

SAG-AFTRA represents 160,000 media professionals, most of whom are not stars but working actors piecing together small roles, commercials and voiceover work. For those individuals, AI doesn’t democratize opportunities, it eliminates them.

Implications For Hollywood’s Future

The entertainment industry has weathered technological disruption before: from silent films to talkies, from radio to television, from CDs to streaming music. Each disruption created winners and losers. However, what makes this time different is that AI is trained on the work of the very performers it’s designed to replace, without their consent or compensation. Previous technologies transformed the creation or distribution of art, while AI extracts value from existing human creativity to replace future human participation.

The optimistic view is that AI will augment rather than replace, that it will make resources available for studios to invest more into top talent and live experiences. This perspective assumes good faith from an industry with a poor track record of sharing the spoils of efficiency gains with labor. The more likely future is a bifurcated industry with a handful of superstar humans commanding premium rates and a growing universe of AI talent for everything else.

Navigating Hollywood has always been about control: who gets cast, who gets paid, whose stories are told. AI talent does not change that fundamental dynamic. It just shifts the balance of power increasingly away from performers.

The uncomfortable truth is that AI is here and studios are quietly embracing it. The battle over who controls the future is being fought right now, while most of us are debating whether the technology works.

It works…but only for those who own it.