Hollywood’s newest ‘actress’ Tilly Norwood is about to make her big debut — but she’s not real.
Hollywood’s newest ‘actress’ Tilly Norwood is about to make her big debut — but she’s not real. AP
An emerging studio just unveiled Tilly Norwood, AI-generated actress, sparking debate over the use of AI performers in Hollywood.
AI talent studio Xicoia introduced Tilly Norwood recently at the Zurich Summit during the Zurich Film Festival. She is the first AI performer from the studio, a of the AI production studio Particle6. Founder Eline Van der Velden said talent agents have been interested in signing the studios first creation.
The news comes just two years after a Hollywood strike which pinpointed protections against AI use replacing actors and filmmakers. Many actors and filmmakers have come out in harsh opposition to the AI actress.
SAG-AFTRA, a union representing 160,000 performers, broadcasters and recording artists, reaffirmed its opposition to the replacement of humans with synthetics.
“To be clear, ‘Tilly Norwood’ is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation,” the statement reads.
SAG-AFTRA statement continued saying that AI actors “creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.”
The 2023 strike ended after the union received “unprecedented provisions for consent and compensation that will protect members from the threat of AI.” But many actors were still wary of how digital body doubles could decrease the number of available jobs.
Particle6 founder Eline Van der Velden released a statement on both her and Norwood’s Instagram accounts, which argued that AI was still art. “To those who have expressed anger over the creation of my AI character, Tilly Norwood: she is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work – a piece of art. Like many forms of art before her, she sparks conversation, and that in itself shows the power of creativity,” the post reads.
Van der Velden wrote that AI actors “should be judged as part of their own genre, on their own merits, rather than compared directly with human actors.”
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