{"id":277446,"date":"2025-10-04T15:34:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T15:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/277446\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T15:34:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T15:34:15","slug":"tilly-norwood-is-a-gen-ai-psyop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/277446\/","title":{"rendered":"Tilly Norwood is a gen AI psyop"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week at the Zurich Film Festival<\/a>, Eline Van der Velden \u2014 founder and CEO of AI production house Particle6 and its subsidiary talent studio Xicoia \u2014 said that a number of talent agents had expressed interest in working with Tilly Norwood, an AI-generated \u201cactress\u201d created by the companies. Van der Velden has not gone into detail about which agencies might be contemplating whether they should bring Norwood (and by extension, Xicoia) on as clients. But simply saying that agents have come knocking was enough to get the entertainment industry trades buzzing<\/a> and posting stories about how Norwood came to be.<\/p>\n

Norwood is the first of many lifelike digital avatars being cooked up at Xicoia, and Van der Velden has said<\/a> that she wants \u201cTilly to be the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman.\u201d So far, the character\u2019s biggest \u201crole\u201d has been in Particle6\u2019s \u201cAI Commissioner\u201d video parodying the TV production process. Like many gen AI startup founders<\/a>, Van der Velden speaks about Tilly Norwood\u2019s potential acting career with a confidence that doesn\u2019t really seem warranted when you actually see what the avatar is doing<\/a>. A lot of Tilly Norwood\u2019s rollout feels like a stunt that could easily be ignored. But buzz-generating stunts like this can also lead to nonsensical ideas like \u201cAI actors\u201d becoming normalized in people\u2019s minds.<\/p>\n

There is an intellectual dishonesty to calling Tilly Norwood an actress that becomes abundantly clear when you understand what Xicoia has been developing. Tilly Norwood is not a real woman who can think, act, or make decisions independently \u2014 it is an animated avatar whose movements and speech are generated by an AI model trained on footage of actual people. Deadline<\/a> reports that Xicoia wants to give people ways to interact with Tilly online where the avatar could \u201cengage in unscripted conversations, perform monologues, respond to trends in real time and adapt tone and references to suit platform-specific audiences.\u201d Some of Tilly\u2019s responses will be automated, but the avatar also requires \u201chuman creative oversight\u201d in order to function properly.<\/p>\n

In essence, Tilly Norwood is a digital puppet that can be made to do whatever the folks at Xicoia want it to, and that seems to be a marketing point the company wants to stress. At one point in \u201cAI Commissioner,\u201d a skeezy male avatar says that it is in love with Tilly because \u201cshe\u2019ll do anything I say,\u201d which makes it seem like Xicoia is trying to appeal to an audience<\/a> keen on seeing these characters doing things<\/a> other than \u201cacting.\u201d The whole video is creepy, but also telling in terms of what Xicoia thinks Tilly can be used for.<\/p>\n

Van der Velden \u2014 herself a former actor and comedian \u2014 probably knows that there is more to acting than reciting lines, hitting marks, and dressing up in costumes. She also likely understands that, unless the project was an in-house Xicoia production, inserting Tilly into a movie or series would pose a number of technical challenges. But regardless of whether Van der Velden actually believes that Xicoia\u2019s gen AI creations can do what living performers can, she is seeding the idea that it\u2019s possible by getting Tilly Norwood\u2019s name into people\u2019s mouths and minds.<\/p>\n

This kind of marketing tactic is similar to the hyperbolic doomerism<\/a> that AI boosters have used to hype up their products. As odd as it is to hear AI\u2019s proponents gleefully sounding alarms about how destructive the technology they\u2019re developing is, it makes much more sense when you think about those warnings as a kind of advertisement. It implies that everything about gen AI is inevitable rather than a result of the decisions people are making<\/a>. And that implied inevitability is meant to make you more willing to accept and buy into the gen AI hype machine<\/a> \u2014 even when the tech doesn\u2019t really work the way it was promised<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tilly Norwood may never make it big the way Xicoia wants, but just days after the avatar began making headlines, Italian producer Andrea Iervolino announced that he has been developing an AI director<\/a> designed to \u201ccelebrate the poetic and dreamlike language of great European cinema.\u201d All of this feels ridiculous because that\u2019s exactly what it is. But the larger goal is to inure you to the strangeness of it all so that when these products \u2014 be they movies, shows, or TikToks \u2014 finally come to market, your reaction is \u201cSure, why not?\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if agents aren\u2019t banging on Xicoia\u2019s door in hopes of getting into the Tilly Norwood business, the company is trying to speak that outcome into reality. It recently told Variety<\/a> that \u201ceveryone wants an interview with Tilly.\u201d And if the avatar were to secure talent representation, it would send a message to the entertainment industry that some see digital constructs as being just as capable of doing jobs that have traditionally been done by living people.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s funny about the Tilly Norwood fuss is that the avatar isn\u2019t even much of an industry first. The internet is filled with AI-generated images and footage<\/a> of brunette women, and it is hard to forget Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within\u2019s Aki Ross \u2014 a \u201cvirtual actress\u201d (voiced by Ming-Na Wen) that Squaresoft tried to turn into a real-world celebrity<\/a>. The big difference here is that Xicoia, like basically every gen AI outfit, is trying to brute force itself into relevance even as real people within the entertainment industry have cried foul. SAG-AFTRA hit the nail on the head<\/a> when it said that Tilly Norwood \u201cdoesn\u2019t solve any \u2018problem\u2019 \u2014 it creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike Tilly Norwood, SAG-AFTRA\u2019s concerns are very, very real, and much more deserving of our attention.<\/p>\n

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