In September 2025, what initially seemed like another typical success story took an unexpected twist in Hollywood. Talent agents were eagerly flocking around actress Tilly Norwood, only to discover she was an AI creation from Eline Van der Velden’s Xicoia studio. Meanwhile, Hallwood Media inked a $3 million record deal with AI music artist Xania Monet, following her chart-topping success on the Billboard R&B Digital Song Sales chart. These developments signaled a transformative shift in the entertainment industry, marking the moment when AI’s presence transitioned from a looming possibility to a tangible reality.

The response from the industry was swift and charged with concern. Actress Emily Blunt described Norwood’s debut as “really, really scary,” while Whoopi Goldberg cautioned audiences about the lack of real connection with AI performers. SAG-AFTRA issued a strong statement advocating for the preservation of human-centered creativity. However, the underlying issue extends beyond mere discomfort; it raises questions about who will ultimately wield control and reap profits from the evolving entertainment landscape.

The Economics Are Brutally Simple

Research by Morgan Stanley highlights the financial motivations behind AI’s growing role in media. Studios are eyeing potential cost reductions of about 10% industry-wide, with television and film production possibly enjoying savings of up to 30%. This economic edge makes AI an attractive option, threatening to displace human talent. The rationale is clear: why enter into pricey negotiations with actors when studios can effectively own AI talent?

Van der Velden’s aspirations for Tilly Norwood were made clear at the Zurich Summit, where she expressed her ambition for Norwood to rival Hollywood icons like Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman. Her pitch was not about complementing human actors but explicitly about replacing them. AI performers, unlike their human counterparts, do not age, negotiate salaries, or decline roles, raising the question of who will manage and advocate for them. This could lead to a re-creation of current market dynamics, albeit with AI figures instead of human stars. Moreover, studios might eventually develop their own AI actors to bypass these intermediaries altogether.

The music industry is witnessing a similar evolution. Xania Monet, an AI music artist crafted by Mississippi poet Telisha Jones with the Suno AI platform, exemplifies this shift. Jones provides the lyrical content drawn from her personal experiences, while Suno generates the vocals. Monet’s management emphasizes the human element behind the AI, yet this doesn’t resolve the dilemma of determining the true creator of value—Jones or the AI platform. Like traditional music production, this is a collaborative effort, but AI’s involvement complicates how value and credit are attributed.

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?”

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 21: Chelsea Edmundson attends the world premiere of “The Death Of Snow White” at Harmony Gold on March 21, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Paul Archuleta/Getty Images)

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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.