The Sunday Daily: Hollywood’s A.I. Moment

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2026

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There’s a lot of anxiety about artificial intelligence invading Hollywood; the general mood there right now could be called “doom and gloom.” But speculation about a future where A.I. actors perform A.I. scripts in A.I.-generated movies often obscures the role A.I. is currently playing in the industry. In this episode, the host Michael Barbaro talks with the Hollywood reporter Brooks Barnes and the movie critic Alissa Wilkinson about the ways that A.I. is already showing up in our movies and television today, and how they see it contributing to — and complicating — the future.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times, I'm Michael Barrow.
0:06.0	This is The Daily on Sunday.
0:13.9	We all knew TV was dead, but thought, why not squeeze in one last development meeting?
0:19.8	This is a video, a kind of comedy sketch, produced by a company in the United Kingdom called Particle 6.
0:26.6	Now, Particle 6 bills itself as the world's leading AI production studio.
0:31.5	The commissioner said no.
0:32.6	AI generated 100 better ideas in minutes, perfectly aligned to channel data, viewing figures and optimized for the audience.
0:39.2	So everything in this video, the voices you're hearing, the words that they're saying,
0:43.7	all of it was generated by artificial intelligence.
0:47.6	And the star of this video is...
0:51.3	Tilly Norwood, 100% AI-generated actress.
0:56.5	Like if a Sunday roast went to drama school and got BAFTA optimized.
0:59.8	But can she cry on Graham Norton?
1:02.4	Of course she can.
1:03.7	And it'll be clipped, subtitled, and monetized on TikTok by much time.
1:08.4	It seemed like a clever one-off.
1:10.8	But a few months later, Particle 6 announced that Ms. Norwood was close to signing a deal to be represented by a major Hollywood talent agency.
1:22.0	The kind of thing you'd expect from an actual human actress.
1:26.9	And that news caused a sensation in Hollywood.
1:31.1	Good Lord.
1:32.9	We're screwed.
1:34.1	Actors howled in protest.
	...

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