A photo-real AI-generated character named Tilly Norwood is sharpening Hollywood's debate over whether synthetic performers are a new creative format or a threat to human performers' rights and pay.
Norwood is the flagship creation of Particle6, a London-based AI-powered production studio. Particle6 founder Eline Van der Velden said the idea emerged after a surge of AI-made online personalities. She said Particle6 has been experimenting with AI for several years and wanted to build a character with a defined name, look and personality.
"I had seen lots of AI influencers pop up and we'd been experimenting in AI for the past three years and I thought it'd be really fun to create a computer generated AI character," said Van der Velden.
"So we thought long and hard about what she should be called and what she should look like and what her personality would be like and that is who became Tilly Norwood.”
Norwood's profile rose after she was unveiled in late September at an industry event in Zurich in a short parody about making an AI-generated television show.
In clips released by Particle6, Norwood introduces herself as "the world's first AI actor", a label that has helped propel attention but also triggered backlash.
SAG-AFTRA, the U.S. union representing about 160,000 performers and other media workers, has condemned the concept of replacing people with "synthetics" and said creativity should remain "human-centered". It has argued that such characters risk being produced by systems trained on performers' work without permission or compensation.
Van der Velden said critics often assume the goal is to cut actors out.
"I love real actors. I don't want her to take real actors jobs at all," she said.
She said Particle6 and Xicoia, her AI talent studio, pitches AI-generated characters as a way to help get productions financed when budgets fall short, allowing filmmakers to keep expensive scenes rather than rewriting them out. In her view, lower costs could mean more projects are greenlit and more actors ultimately get hired.
Particle6 is also building a broader story world around the character. Van der Velden said the company is creating "a whole universe" called the "Tillyverse", with Norwood following "her own creative path".
Stars in effects-heavy films have also voiced concern about how generative AI could be misused. At a Los Angeles junket for "Avatar: Fire and Ash", actor Zoe Saldana said her main worry was the lack of rules and that regulation was needed to prevent the technology being abused or "weaponized".
"I just think that regulation is what's going to give us the safety, the protection from each other and prevents us from abusing a tool that can, you know, if it falls in the wrong hands, it can otherwise be weaponized," Saldana told Reuters.
Fellow Avatar actor Stephen Lang said AI was a tool that was still being understood and would likely be overused and abused.
On the question of training data, Van der Velden said it was "least likely" Norwood was trained on actors' work because film and television content is closely protected, and more likely she was trained on licensed or rights-free material.
She also said AI had a "bad reputation" and argued it could create jobs. She said Particle6's internal calculations suggested generating a full film could have a carbon footprint comparable to a transatlantic return flight.
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(Production: Stuart McDill/Matt Stock/Danielle Broadway)