She is introduced in this clip.
As you would have read in the first frame, she and everyone else in that clip are entirely the creation of AI.
Meet Tilly Norwood, an up-and-coming on-screen talent who might just be the next big thing.
Norwood, as can be seen in the exclusive clip above, appears to be a talking, waving, bona fide person – she can even cry.
Except she’s not a real-life person: she doesn’t exist off a screen (yet), having instead been birthed via the increasingly sophisticated capabilities of AI software.
But then again, so has the entire sketch above, including all the other actors you see.
Norwood and the sketch are both the work of Particle 6, the UK production company created and led by Eline van de Velden, a former actor-turned-producer who also happens to have a Master’s degree in physics from London’s Imperial College.
“We want Tilly to be the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman, that’s the aim of what we’re doing,” van der Velden tells Broadcast International.
…The sketch is also acting as the first on-screen appearance for Norwood, and discussions are now in the works to see if talent agencies want to sign up the AI creation.
The article goes on to describe how the clip was produced.
She initially worked with Chat GPT to generate the script, describing the software as “sort of a writing partner”, detailing the topics and the target audience. “And I briefed in details about the industry, the types of things that are funny about our business.”
It was, she says, a similar process to briefing a (real human) writer. “It would come back to me with ideas and I would be an exec producer effectively, we worked together. I then got feedback from lots of people and we adapted constantly.”.
Next, van der Velden moved onto the visual side of things, divvying up the text between the characters and ensuring they had the prompts to deliver their lines with the right tone and nuance.
“There were so many iterations – I mean, it took a long time, I’m not going to lie. And it’s also about performance, right, because every one of these characters will say the lines differently and you need to instruct them differently.”
The Particle 6 chief points to the part of the sketch when the narrator asks whether Norwood can cry on Graham Norton.
“At first, the line was pronounced as, “but can she cry on Graham Norton”, with the wrong emphasis. And we needed the voice to be more doubtful, so you’re really trying to find the words to describe the emotion. It’s like instructing an actor really and for me it was very much about getting the right performance out of the AI actors because if they’d say it in a wooden way, it wouldn’t have worked at all.”
It is, perhaps, best described as AI directing.
There were endless tweaks – at one point, the sketch had almost 20 characters – while the creation of Norwood has taken much longer still. The character has been built via endless prompts, each of which are designed to ensure she appeals to the right demographics to support her on-screen career.
The entire process took about two months and the result is so realistic, it is uncanny. There is no question in my mind that we are soon going to see entire films that are created by AI starring AI characters.
One of the key issues during the last strike by actors was that their own likeness could not be used by AI to generate new content that did not involve them. So AI will not be allowed to produce new films that feature an AI-generated Nicole Kidman unless she consents. But now production companies can create their own ‘stars’ whom the producers can get to do whatever they want. This is going to be terrible for the vast numbers of people who are currently involved in radio, TV, and films, both on air and behind the scenes.
How will audiences react? Will knowing that the people we are seeing on the screen are not real somehow destroy the suspension of disbelief that is necessary for the viewer to fully enjoy the experience?
Probably not. After all, we already know that scenes that we are watching are the product of writers and actors and are not real, even if based on real-life events. AI-generated films would add just another layer of artificiality that we could soon get used to.
For now, Norwood and her Hollywood dreams are just that, but ultimately any success will come down not to AI but audience reaction.
And for van der Velden, there is no reason to believe that AI talents, and indeed shows entirely created by AI, will not be embraced by viewers as long as they’re getting top-notch storytelling.
“I feel like there’s an equal emotional connection between AI-generated content and real content,” she adds, although perhaps the real question is whether we can even tell the difference anymore.
This video shows how Norwood can be inserted into the series The Last of Us.
But what about the vast numbers of people who play auxiliary roles in the industry, such as reviewers who critique acting, writing, and directing? What about celebrity gossip columnists? Paparazzi? They may well become redundant. How can one write about a director’s vision or the authenticity of an actor’s portrayal?
And award shows? Would it make sense to give a Best Actor award to Tilly Norwood? Would she be put in competition with another actor from a rival AI company?
Live stage productions may end up being the only option for human actors to practice and demonstrate their craft.
She won’t do too well on the casting couch…
Perhaps they might have to get proper jobs. Oh, no, hang on, the machines came for those decades ago, and I didn’t see the film and TV industry people lining up to defend them.
“Uncanny” is right, but not in a good way. There’s a lot of this slop shit about, but to my eyes at least it’s about as realistic as Toy Story -- there’s still something wrong with those “people”. If you can’t see it… I don’t know what to tell you. But it screams to me -- something about Tilly and all her friends still makes my skin crawl like the facehuggers in Aliens. Maybe one day they won’t. Maybe one day I won’t be able to tell the difference. But for now, they’re actually worse than Toy Story -- they’re DEEP in the Uncanny Valley.
i get people wanting to defend jobs. it’s natural and it should be done when those jobs are necessary. but the problem with organizing / unionizing in creative fields is that there is a bottomless supply of scabs with stars in their eyes. the jobs in the field are no less exploitive and abusive today than they were a hundred years ago. if AI destroys the casting couch factory, i’m all for it.
people who want to make art need to find a way to do it that exists outside of the capitalist system. the only reason to want to go to hollywood is the dream of capitalism patting you on the head, lifting you above the teeming masses, and saying you are one of the golden people. back to the community theater with you sons of guns. and making indie movies for yewchoob, that kind of thing.
this is perfect for the kind of artistic values artists should actually want. corpos and mainstream can be regurgitations of the same kind of shit that has been made forever -- AI fed on the meat of the past -- and actual innovation and personal expression can come from the indie sphere.
--
… embraced by viewers as long as they’re getting top-notch storytelling.
The audiences who gobbled up Game of Thrones (princes and princesses! zombie invasion!) have already transcended such old-fashioned criteria.
@Mano
There are probably advances to be made -- But the AI industry has a history of faking stuff in their demos. Personally , till the copyright issues are worked out no big studio is going to risk this -- imagine creating a billion dollar franchise movie that is not copyrighted!
Till that time you can enjoy professionals using AI video tools courtesy of Pivot to AI -- Google VEO fails
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDkkUdyxkek&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it5u8fUMGzI&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCYw9EwxAwo&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ4rwXeSU6Y&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA
@nomenexrecto @1
The entire set of tech -dudebros think you are wrong -- Elon Musk’s robotics , AI personalities and completely servile LLMs -- what more could they want /s?
nomenexrecto @ 1
Rule 34 is the Internet’s casting couch…
… and I wonder how long it will take for Tilly Norwood to be ‘available’ there.
The copyright issue is easily solved. Remember, copyright is a temporary monopoly, granted to someone who creates art that they intend eventually to release into the Public Domain, as an out-and-out bribe. Machines do not need to be bribed to do their jobs.
We just need to pass a law stating that no copyright or other privilege of temporary exclusivity can inhere in material that was entirely machine-generated; anything that did not require a non-trivial human effort to create it belongs immediately to the Public Domain. As long as the software that created the “art” was made by humans, it can be subject to copyright; and maybe also the input to it, if it required a non-trivial, human creative step, but never the output from it.
Think of all the film techniques that are NOT seen in that 2-minute video. It’s all static torso shots, talking heads like a newscast. Missing are tracking shots, where the camera follows a character moving across a varied background. More than one person talking in the same frame. Speeches longer than a few seconds. In fact, try to find a single cut that is longer than 5 seconds. Currently AI generators cannot do these things: they can’t show multiple people at once, they can’t show any single person moving or speaking for longer than a few seconds. Don’t extrapolate from this video to assume that a satisfying feature length film — or even a 23-minute TV sitcom episode — could be made with current AI.
Will the AI tools improve? Maybe, some, but the rate of improvement of LLMs generally has slowed drastically and may have stalled; and every increment demands exponentially more compute time, and thus exponentially more power consumption and cost.
You will see AI ads before a full AI movie. People and company lawyers don’t care as much about most of the issues with AI animation and it only has to hold together for 15 seconds or so. There are already companies working on generating an ad using AI on the fly. With AI ads the companies can build to language, country, skin color, culture, sex, age and other targeting factors in a way that is impractical with actually filming ads. If you search for maple syrup and the system sees you are a white guy with interest in the outdoors you will get an ad about the manly side of collecting maple syrup from the woods. If your a woman with children you get an ad about a family pancake breakfast. Essentially the next level of focused pandering.
Just … @#8,
There were tracking shots at the beginning, the middle, and end where the camera followed a character moving across a varied background..
Tilly is an actor in the same sense as Buzz Lightyear, that is, not at all. They are CG characters, made by humans using computers, and owned entirely by the creating company. If she was an actual actor, she would have all the rights associated with being a human -- she would have an income of her own, with taxes payable, and the most she would have to pay to the creating company would be an agent’s fee. Somehow I don’t see the creators seeing her as a person in any way that costs them access to that income.
It may seem just a little “off” now, but we will see excremental improvements.
I advise people to actually watch the video. It shows how it was created. Including using AI to come up with prompts to feed other AI. It’s genuinely mind-blowing. “How to create something totally fake from scratch”. It shows all the tools used and how.
@ ^
I’m referring to the 2nd vid in the OP.
Yeah, this still has some flaws and it’s the product of months of work. Sounds like it’ll be awhile before it’s up for replacing humans.
So they’ll have some time to work on the fundamental flaw of the whole model: How to get any future creative input after shifting all the money to people who do little or no creative work.
And if you think it sucks for the industry but normal people will benefit then you haven’t paid much attention to how this sort of corporate scheme works. It’ll go like Standard Oil. A promotional period where you get good deals until there’s no need for it anymore. Then, monopoly pricing. Right now the product isn’t of a quality to compete. But once they think it is, it’s not going to be free for the average person to make something equivalent to an A list film or TV show with. Not even if they could provide all the compute resources. Promotional periods only exist to increase revenue later on.
People talk endlessly about comics, cartoons, and anime and the characters within. Reality has nothing to do with the relentless fandom stan-chatter that is not direct content but *about* content. San Diego Comic Con is huuuge. And loud. And busy. Human beings talk, it’s what they do.
And if you think the casting couch is gone, you haven’t seen any AI porn. Just because the loudestly pubicized programs that are readily available have levels beyone which they (usually) won’t go doesn’t mean there aren’t any out there already. There most certainly are! We are humans with big brains as our primary sexual organ. Porn is always first.
I live where the movie industry started and where the studios first existed. (Many of them are gone or now distributed across the Los Angeles basin). Actors going the way of buggy whip manufacturers seems… perfectly okay with me. They are 10s out of 10 in both beauty and feigning in the small pond where they come from and come here and find that they are only sixes and sevens. They are used to getting what they want without producing any real art or even having any other life skills, and it takes a certain amount of bullheaded solipsism and sociopathy to keep on trying in the face of all the competition to stay here. Actors here are, as a rule, awful people.
The academy awards this year 2025 had multiple actors in these big budget movies asking us please pleez pls to go to the analog RL movie theater. The overpriced no free parking sticky loud as fuck substandard food you could not feed a child movie theater. I dunno. Like many people I stay at home and choose my own virtual theater, and it has nothing to do with ‘could I afford it’. I pay more for streamings each month.
@seachange, 16:
This suggests to me that you don’t understand what a casting couch is.
I haven’t seen any AI porn (call me old fashioned or out of touch), but there’s a rather good point in this article from the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/06/rise-of-ai-girlfriends-adult-dating-websites
““Do you prefer your porn with a lot of abuse and human trafficking, or would you rather talk to an AI?” Steve Jones, who runs an AI porn site, asked.”
Obviously AI porn has the problems of reproducing stereotypes (or as the providers might call it, “catering for paying customer’s expressed preferences”), and potentially raising the consumer’s expectations to unrealistic levels… but I’d argue that if you’re the kind of person who actually expects women in real life to conform to what you see in ANY kind of porn, AI or otherwise, then put kindly, you’re probably not boyfriend material. Being an adult, if it means anything, surely means being able to distinguish between fantasy and reality.
I haven’t bothered searching for it, but I’ll stick my neck out and say “Tilly Norwood” has done porn already -- probably by the end of the day of launch of that video. Rule 34 is over TWENTY TWO YEARS old at this point, so it would probably still get away with billing itself as “teen”…
If you thought the AI “actress” was creepy, just wait until you see the reaction of a middle aged white dude opining about her virtues.
https://www.thefp.com/p/my-favorite-actress-is-not-human-tilly-norwood-artificial-intelligence
If you don’t want to follow a link to The Free Press (and I certainly don’t blame you), I’ll just give you the highlight: “Tilly Norwood doesn’t need a hairstylist, has no regrettable posts, and if you wish to see a virgin on-screen, this is one of your better chances. That’s because she’s AI.”
@bluerizlagirl
I dont think so. If it were a case of the tech companies stole other peoples work and arent going to pay/ credit them , sure the courts will rule in the tech companies favor- if they didnt the political class will pass laws in favor of the tech companies.
But here you have tech companies v/s each other (I still remember laughing at Oracle suing Google for billions for copying 6 lines of an API interface for Java Android , A case which if it had come to someone like me , would have resulted in contempt of court for Oracle , but a judge did rule in favor of Oracle and then it was overruled or something) and tech companies v/s other big (media) companies -- also famously litigious. Given that all the AI companies train on all data they get their hands on and given that there will be AI content all over the internet , which may be indistinguishable from real content , atleast for a machine, it will be fun to watch. if we go the other route and say everything is allowed ( Current law is that no AI generated content can be copyrighted ) -- so if Tilly Norwood is going to star in some Oscar winning movie or will be the next big character in the MCU -- whats preventing a nobody who can prompt a tool from diluting the brand ? Or selling merchandise ? Or creating her saying the most woke / nazi thing ? people love authenticity in their celebrities after all (ha! but it is the ideal).
You are more likely to use this AI content for stuff people dont care or mindlessly watch -- tik tok reels , ads and so.
Current public sentiment is fortunately extremely negative for the use of AI in arts -so that most (good/popular)creators either don’t use it or hide the fact that they do.