Chris Pratt’s fate lies in the hands of artificial intelligence in Mercy, but he’s certainly not reciprocating any.
If there’s one thing Chris Pratt has learned from his latest role, it’s that he wants the least to do with artificial intelligence as humanly possible.
The actor came out swinging at Tuesday’s premiere of Mercy in New York, slamming AI “actress” Tilly Norwood with arguably well-deserved vulgarities.
In a red carpet interview with Variety, Pratt indicated a lack of concern in regard to the panic surrounding generative AI’s potential to replace and disrupt the entertainment industry’s status quo.
“I don’t feel like someone’s going to replace me that’s AI,” he began, “I heard this Tilly Norwood thing, I think that’s all bullshit. I’ve never seen her in a movie. I don’t know who this bitch is.”
Whilst the internet jury is still out regarding Chris’s casual reference to women as “bitches” (artificial or not), his sentiment echoes wider Hollywood’s consensus of Tilly Norwood being paraded as a real actress as distasteful.
Created mid-last year by Eline Van der Velden, Norwood was generated in hopes of being welcomed with open arms into the industry as the “next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman”.
Instead, she was deemed scary, misogynistic and generally insulting to the hundreds of living, breathing actresses whose faces were composited together to create our modern-day Frankenstein’s monster.
Pratt goes on to cite AI as “an amazing tool…in the right hands”, echoing director James Cameron’s remarks from earlier this year in regards to streamlining production, but still argues that filmmaking requires an essential level of humanity.
“I don’t think you’re going to replace the human soul…or any of this stuff that requires human yearning and suffering and vision in art”, he concluded.
Mercy releases January 22 in Australia but has opened to less-than-favourable reviews internationally, some citing it as “baffling” and “hollow”; others comparing it to last year’s War of the Worlds remake (which tells you all you need to know, really).
It seems apparent that nobody wants artificial intelligence in the movies – actors and audiences alike.
