Tilly Norwood was only the beginning.
FastStream Interactive, a group that designs tech for interactive TV channels, on Tuesday unveiled its new line of AI-generated TV presenters. The computer-generated images will be placed on FastStream’s interactive TV music channel, ROXi, mimicking MTV-style presenters by introducing musicians and clips. The interactive free-TV channel airs on Nextgen TV in 31 markets in the U.S., including in Washington DC, Seattle and Las Vegas, via broadcast partners Sinclair and Grey, as well as on Sky services in the UK and Ireland.
FastStream was set up through a management buyout of ROXi earlier this year, where a syndicate of investors joined the ROXi founders in acquiring the company’s technology and assets. Investors in FastStream include Sinclair and Gray Media, U2 bassist Adam Clayton, former U2 manager Paul McGuinness, Simon Cowell, Robbie Williams, Kylie Minogue, Terra Firma Founder Guy Hands, and British billionaire businessman Jim Mellon.
FastStream introduced its new tech via a video (see below) demonstrating the “virtual hosts” in action, featuring “presenters” of various ages, ethnicities, and regional accents (British, American, Australian). The announcement follows the presentation of Tilly Norwood, an “AI actress” created by tech company Particle 6 Productions, which has sparked a ferocious backlash from actors’ unions and the creative community.
In a statement, FastStream Interactive CEO Rob Lewis touted the cost-cutting benefits of using virtual presenters.
“With AI we can have ROXi presenters introducing Beyoncé from a yacht moored off her favorite Caribbean Island without having to hire and fly in a production team or charter the yacht,” he said. Lewis noted that “we understand why some actors and presenters are worried about AI,” but argued the declining TV industry ultimately needs “to embrace AI-generated talent and interactive TV experiences if we’re to attract younger viewers on TV.”
Responding to questions from The Hollywood Reporter via email, FastStream explained that because ROXi’s offering includes “100 million music videos and virtual music videos, it would simply be impossible to have TV presenters providing contextualised and personalised segments” for the entire music video catalog “at this scale, using traditional production techniques.”
The company said the AI presenters will be identified as such on screen. Lewis also noted that ROXi excludes “all unlicensed AI-generated music from its catalog.”
The company said the AI presenters were developed “using a bespoke FSI virtual TV presenter platform developed in-house, integrated with Google Veo3, which does the video generation,” but did not comment on the underlying data used for AI training. One of the main criticisms of Tilly Norwood is that the software that created the character was allegedly trained on the uncompensated work of professional actors.
Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Equity, the British Actors’ trade union, said: “Whether it’s an AI actor or AI TV presenter, real human data inputs are used to train AI systems and generate these digital assets. Performers’ work and likeness must not be scraped, stolen or illegally processed. ROXi rightly mentions the importance of music rights holders being ‘properly licensed and renumerated’ – this must extend to the performance data used to create the AI presenters. The Wild West of AI performance creation cannot continue to rip off performers for the profits of private tech companies whose businesses may put them out of work.”