Tilly Norwood. This. Girl. Is. The. Nastiest. Skank. Bitch. I. Have. Ever. Met. Do. Not. Trust. Her. She. Is. A. Fugly. Slut.
“She was a nightmare to work with.” - Lukas Gage
“She threw coffee in my FACE!!!” - Odessa A’zion
“Not an actress actually nice try” - Nicholas Alexander Chavez
“Ugh” - Donna Murphy
“😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱” - Toni Collette
She’s barely just arrived in Hollywood, and already “actress” Tilly Norwood is being derided as the worst thing to happen to the entertainment industry since Megalopolis. Why? Well, for starters: She’s not real. And that seems to be a huge point of contention. This news cycle began over the weekend when Deadline ran a story with a headline claiming unnamed talent agents are “circling AI actress Tilly Norwood as studios quietly embrace AI technology.” This wasn’t actually reported, but rather simply taking technologist Eline Van der Velden’s assertion at face value.
Van der Velden, the founder of AI production studio Particle6, was speaking on a panel at the Zurich Summit on Saturday, just days after announcing the creation of Xicoia, an AI talent studio designed to “create, manage and monetize a new generation of hyperreal digital stars.” She used this panel to tease the fact that in the next few months, she’ll be announcing which agency is going to represent Particle6’s first AI offering, Tilly Norwood, a creation she’s trying to convince the crowd is not merely a glorified computer, but rather a non-living, non-breathing, but fully capable actress.
Deadline’s story was picked up by Variety, The Independent, Hypebeast and more, each outlet dignifying Van der Velden’s intention by running headlines calling the computing an AI actress (The AV Club, for what it’s worth, put AI actress in quotes). And though a slew of Hollywood has come out in defiance, thus eliciting another round of press (“AI Actress Tilly Norwood Draws Backlash”), a certain amount of damage has already been done in proliferating Tilly’s name all over the Internet. Me writing this and you reading this, alone, means that Van der Velden was successful in her effort to drum up attention. And in this attention economy, few things are more valuable.
I think a considerable amount of blame has to be placed on Deadline for reporting on this as though it is fact and not merely propaganda. There might be conversations with talent agencies happening, but until these agencies are named, there’s no way to know if they are legitimate agencies or agencies merely looking to boost their own standing in the digital algorithm in the same way Van der Velden was in offering up the news to begin with.
But also, talking about Norwood as though it’s akin to a human is the even more troubling part of this. There is no Tilly Norwood, much in the same way there is no Wizard of Oz. If Norwood is able to be utilized in Hollywood, it will be at Van der Velden’s gain. A puppetmaster manipulating a puppet at the behest of an industry that knows better. Even putting the term “AI actress” into the lexicon is damaging in likening a character to a human being, as though actors should have a qualifier before their name specifying if they are, indeed, human.
As Reese Witherspoon recently told Lulu Garcia-Navarro on The Interview: “You can be sad and lament it all you want, but the change is here.” And while I don’t disagree on the reality, there’s still a lot of rumination around what that change should fully encompass. Tech companies say AI will make productions cheaper and faster, but many in Hollywood are rightly fearing what that means for them and their livelihoods. Traditional Hollywood producers like Pouya Shahbazian claim AI revolutionizes the process of studio filmmaking — and that may be true, but what remains unanswered is at what cost.
The backlash against Norwood was so strong that Van der Velden put out a statement.
“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. 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. I’m an actor myself, and nothing – certainly not an AI character – can take away the craft or joy of human performance.”
But the damage is already done, I fear. See, it’s not Tilly’s existence that I see as the threat (AI characters are not new), but the way in which so many outlets are covering it. Though Tilly might not be designed as a replacement for people, so says its creator, the positioning of this character as an “AI actress” and even using the pronouns she/her to describe something that is not at all human shows the ways in which the media ecosystem allows for the normalization and humanization of something that is entirely a robot. And while the backlash is earned and appropriate and even comical at times, the controversy only fuels Particle6, Xicoia and now Norwood.
I suspect Tilly Norwood’s 15 minutes will lapse quickly. I mean, look at what a flash in the pan Sophia the Robot ended up being. That said, I think it’s incumbent on us to not attempt to allow these stories to read as anything other than what they are: start-ups attempting to find footing (and funding) by appearing as though they are on the cutting edge without showing any proof of concept.
Sorry Tilly, but to me you are, and will always be, a flop.