This was published 5 months ago
Tilly Norwood is on the verge of Hollywood stardom. But she’s not human
If her supporters are to be believed, actress Tilly Norwood is on the verge of Hollywood superstardom. The London-based girl-next-door starlet, they say, is preparing to sign with a major talent agency.
But Tilly is not a success story from the UK theatre schools or a feel-good tale of a working-class actor with a latent skill for acting, like Owen Cooper, 15, who starred in hit Netflix drama Adolescence and became the youngest male actor to win an Emmy.
Instead, she is manufactured by artificial intelligence, and so is completely fake. She, or it, is poised to be the first AI actress to be signed by a real-life talent agency that normally works with humans, according to Tilly’s creator.
Whether that ambition comes true or not, Tilly’s creation is a sign of the challenge for the film industry as it grapples with whether AI talent can replace much more expensive real-life stars.
AI company Particle6 created Tilly from scratch as a versatile actress who can be employed to star in films, TV shows or adverts for a fraction of the cost of a human actor.
Eline Van Der Velden, the founder of the London-based business, has set up her own AI talent studio, called Xicoria.
It specialises in the creation, management and monetisation of Tilly and other “hyper-real digital stars”.
A number of real-world talent agents are said to be interested in signing up Tilly.
This step, revealed at Zurich Film Festival by Van Der Velden, who is a Dutch comedian, writer, actress and producer, would take AI actors out of the fringe world of tech ideologues and place them firmly at the forefront of media.
While Van Der Velden claims AI is becoming more accepted by Hollywood, Tilly Norwood is a name that is set for a collision course with real actors, unions and writers.
It remains unknown as to the full versatility of Tilly and other AI actors in general, and how they would be deployed, but Particle6 claims using them, not humans, cuts production costs by up to 90 per cent.
Speaking on stage at Zurich, Van Der Velden said productions using AI stars were to be announced in the coming months.
She said that in February, Hollywood was completely against AI actors, but by May this had changed.
“When we first launched Tilly, people were like, ‘What’s that?’, and now we’re going to be announcing which agency is going to be representing her in the next few months,” Van Der Velden said, according to a report in Deadline.
In a video on Particle6’s website, which is itself completely AI-generated, Tilly is described as a “100 per cent AI-generated” character who gives off “girl-next-door vibes”.
The video, itself a comedy sketch, calls Tilly a “roast dinner that went to drama school and was Bafta optimised”.
‘It’s depressing’
The petite, doe-eyed brunette has an RP (received pronunciation) accent and impeccable teeth.
One video shows her on the Graham Norton sofa crying, another on the red carpet and one more shows her as the star in mock trailers for sci-fi, fantasy, horror and action films.
Kristen Schaal, an actress known for her distinctive high-pitched, childlike voice – she plays Louise Belcher on hit cartoon Bob’s Burgers – called the invention of Tilly “depressing”.
She queried if the union SAG-AFTRA, whose members went on strike in 2023 partly over the rising threat of AI usage in productions, had protections in place for threats to the profession like Tilly.
But Van Der Velden said in a statement published on Sunday: “To those who have expressed anger over the creation of our AI character, Tilly Norwood, she is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work – a piece of art.
“I see AI not as a replacement for people, but as a new tool – a new paintbrush. Just as animation, puppetry, or CGI opened fresh possibilities without taking away from live acting, AI offers another way to imagine and build stories.
“[Tilly] represents experimentation, not substitution. Much of my work has always been about holding up a mirror to society through satire, and this is no different.
“I also believe AI characters should be judged as part of their own genre, on their own merits, rather than compared directly with human actors.”