The cinematic industry is grappling with the emergence of artificial intelligence performers, exemplified by a new Western film, As Deep as the Grave, which features an AI-generated likeness of the late actor Val Kilmer. Director Coerte Voorhees utilizes this digital facsimile, which has received approval from the late actor’s family. However, initial reactions to extended footage released earlier this year suggest the technology is not yet seamless. The Kilmer character appears rigid, seemingly lacking both the voice and the subtle, spacey charisma that defined the actor’s real-life performances. Not quite dead and not quite alive, utters that baiting line in the trailer for the new western As Deep as the Grave, an exact facsimile of a young Val Kilmer. Approved by his family but bringing with it a heap of controversy about whether such technology could make flesh-and-blood thespians redundant, director Coerte Voorhees knows exactly what he is doing – this is an AI-created version of the late actor. Not just yet, judging by the extended glimpse of the film released earlier this year: it looks like a thirtysomething Kilmer, if a robot version had been sent back to the 1920s American wilderness by Skynet and, as well as being strangely rigid, had forgotten to download his voice, let alone his signature air of spacey shrewdness. Citing his enthusiasm for new technology that expands storytelling, but surely he would have been dismayed by this freaky doppelganger, kilmer’s estate signed off on it. So AI acting, scraping the external texture of past performances, would seem to be the inverse of something like method acting – whose acolytes excavate their internal psyche and emotions in the interests of authenticity. But AI acting is undeniably becoming more realistic. But they show swift progression on the AI acting front.
Synthetic actors are facing significant public and industry pushback. Last year, the introduction of AI starlet Tilly Norwood sparked widespread revulsion, with actress Emily Blunt famously describing her as “really, really scary.” This reaction highlights the deep-seated apprehension regarding the potential for digital personas to replace flesh-and-blood actors. After her appearance in an introductory “comedy” sketch, Emily Blunt described her as “really, really scary” – underscoring the depth of feeling around the idea of synthetic performers supplanting real ones. What you might call the Norwood injunction – the feeling of a tech-driven agenda imposing something no one asked for – deepened with the announcement the AI-lister will be soon appear in feature-length film Misaligned. If we’d fought that, everybody would still be riding horses today.”, if you draw a parallel with when cars first came out.
Advocates for the technology, such as Higgsfield AI, are aggressively pushing for new production standards. The company recently claimed to have “eliminated” the uncanny valley effect, a significant hurdle for synthetic imagery. Adil Alimzhanov, the content lead at Higgsfield, argues that AI-generated filmmaking provides a liberating path that circumvents traditional, labor-intensive Hollywood structures. This year, the company released two full-length, exclusively AI-generated features: the 95-minute action fantasy Hell Grind and the 115-minute caper comedy The Cully Hill Boys. According to Alimzhanov, these films were completed in just two weeks and one month respectively. A 95-minute action fantasy, and The Cully Hill Boys, a 115-minute Guy Ritchie-esque caper comedy – completed the equivalent of shooting and post-production in a fortnight and a, the two online-only releases – Hell Grind. Higgsfield AI – one of many companies currently pushing the possibilities of AI video – recently claimed to have “eliminated” the uncanny valley: that nagging phoneysimilitude effect that has plagued even sophisticated recent CGI reincarnations, such as the de-aged Indiana Jones in The Dial of Destiny.
Despite the rapid technical output, critics point to fundamental limitations. In Hell Grind, which features digital likenesses of streetball player Matt Kiatipis, MMA fighter Israel Adesanya, and streamer N3on, the characters appear restricted to a single emotion per 15-second shot—the limit of the Seedance 2.0 model. Even with the release of Seedance 2.5, which allowed The Cully Hill Boys, written by human screenwriter Tim Planagan, to be assembled in 30-second segments, the process remains complex. Creating convincing drama requires massive 4,000-word prompts to define camera movement, lighting, and specific character emotions. Then, using the assets as an anchor point, each 30-second segment is defined in a 4,000-word prompt (itself partly generated by an LLM) defining the key parameters: action, camera movement, lighting and, of course, the e. It becomes a case of treating the model like a “marionette doll” and tweaking individual strings. “You could say: there’s a slight quiver on the left side of their lip, and then their gaze diverts slightly, at that point. Which came out three months later, is far more engaging, with enough convincing repartee and comic timing to qualify it as quite funny, the Cully Hill Boys. Why have an intermediary play a “role”, if bespoke characters can be generated for every film.
Industry professionals remain skeptical about whether these tools can replicate true human depth. Tim Webber of the VFX house Framestore notes that AI is currently limited to processing the surface of images. Zack London, a creator who produces AI-generated sci-fi, questions the efficacy of current methods, stating, “An AI is not an actor, so how do you communicate the internal state of a character?” London attempts to bridge this gap by recording real human dialogue before retro-fitting the animation to the performance. Tim Webber, the chief creative officer at British VFX powerhouse Framestore, is sceptical about whether fully AI-generated actors can ever capture the complexity of our inner lives. “AI models are trained on the surface of things – the pixels of internet images, if they’re image models. According to despite actors’ qualms, the future can’t be resisted,, Alimzhanov, 23, who used his own face for Hell Grind’s protagonist. “We can’t fight new tools simply because they transform industries. Where, say, Klaus Kinski could summon torrents of rage by tapping into his personal demons, an AI programmer has to achieve the same effect in much more approximate ways. “An AI is not an actor, so how do you communicate.
Tye Sheridan, co-founder of Wonder Dynamics and star of Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, emphasizes that the most profound cinematic moments often arise from split-second, unquantifiable human choices.
Sheridan’s company, like Framestore, promotes a hybrid approach where AI augments human performance rather than replacing it entirely, using technology to layer digital characters over filmed footage. As these two philosophies—the tech-centric push for total synthesis and the human-centric desire to preserve actor agency—collide, industry leaders continue to debate whether synthetic stars can eventually capture the nuances of legendary performances or if they will remain merely sophisticated, animated marionettes. Where there’s genuine emotion involved, is a long way further down,” he says, to get to the level where it’s a human performance.
