Is Tilly Norwood an AI Psyop?

The recent buzz surrounding Tilly Norwood, a digital avatar presented as an actress, raises significant questions about the future of performance and creativity in the entertainment industry. At the Zurich Film Festival, Eline Van der Velden, CEO of AI production firm Particle6 and its talent studio Xicoia, revealed that several talent agencies have shown interest in representing this AI-generated character. While Van der Velden withheld specific agency names, her announcement alone ignited widespread media coverage and industry speculation about Norwood’s origins and potential.

Xicoia describes Tilly Norwood as the first in a series of hyper-realistic digital personas, with ambitions for her to achieve the stature of major stars like Scarlett Johansson. To date, her most notable appearance has been in a satirical video produced by Particle6, which pokes fun at television production workflows. Observers note that the founder’s enthusiastic predictions for Norwood’s acting career feel disconnected from the avatar’s current capabilities, making the entire campaign seem more like a publicity stunt than a genuine artistic endeavor. Yet such promotional efforts can gradually normalize far-fetched concepts, including the idea of “AI actors,” within public consciousness.

Labeling Tilly Norwood an actress involves a certain degree of intellectual dishonesty, given her actual nature. She is not a living, breathing person capable of independent thought or emotional interpretation. Instead, she functions as an animated figure whose gestures and dialogue are produced by artificial intelligence trained on recordings of real individuals. According to industry reports, Xicoia aims to develop interactive online experiences where Norwood could hold improvised discussions, deliver speeches, and tailor her communication style to different digital audiences. While some interactions would be automated, the system still depends heavily on human creative direction to operate effectively.

In practical terms, Tilly Norwood acts as a digital marionette, entirely controllable by Xicoia’s team, a feature the company appears to emphasize. One unsettling moment in their promotional video involves a male character professing love for Norwood specifically because “she’ll do anything I say.” This implies that Xicoia may be targeting audiences interested in applications for these avatars that extend beyond conventional acting roles. The overall tone of the video is disquieting, yet it revealingly hints at the company’s broader vision for Tilly’s utility.

Van der Velden, who has a background in acting and comedy, surely recognizes that genuine performance involves more than reciting lines and hitting camera marks. She must also be aware of the considerable technical obstacles involved in integrating an AI character into an existing film or series not produced by Xicoia. Regardless of her personal beliefs about AI’s capabilities, she is actively planting the notion that digital performers can rival human ones by keeping Tilly Norwood in the public conversation.

This approach mirrors the alarmist rhetoric often employed by AI proponents to generate excitement around their products. It may seem contradictory to hear developers trumpet the disruptive power of the very technology they are building, but these warnings function as a form of advertising. They suggest that generative AI’s expansion is an unavoidable force of nature, rather than the outcome of deliberate corporate choices. This perceived inevitability is designed to make society more receptive to AI hype, even when the actual technology fails to deliver on its promises.

Tilly Norwood might never achieve the fame Xicoia envisions, but the strategy appears to be having a ripple effect. Shortly after the avatar made headlines, an Italian producer announced his own project: an AI director intended to emulate the style of classic European cinema. The absurdity of these ventures is self-evident, yet their underlying objective is to desensitize the public to their oddity. The goal is that when AI-generated content eventually floods the market, the public response will be one of passive acceptance.

Whether or not talent agents are genuinely lining up to represent Tilly Norwood, Xicoia is aggressively promoting that narrative. The company recently informed Variety that “everyone wants an interview with Tilly,” attempting to manifest industry legitimacy through press coverage. Should a digital entity like Norwood actually secure representation, it would signal to the entertainment world that some stakeholders view synthetic creations as viable replacements for human performers.

What’s particularly ironic about the Tilly Norwood phenomenon is how unoriginal it ultimately is. The internet already overflows with AI-generated images of brunette women, and older attempts like SquareSoft’s virtual actress Aki Ross from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within demonstrate that this concept is far from new. The distinguishing factor today is that firms like Xicoia are aggressively pushing for market relevance despite vocal opposition from within the entertainment community. SAG-AFTRA has rightly pointed out that Tilly Norwood “doesn’t solve any ‘problem’, it creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.”

Unlike the fictional Tilly Norwood, the concerns voiced by SAG-AFTRA reflect very real threats to working artists and deserve far more public attention than any digital puppet.

(Source: The Verge)