Meet Tilly Norwood

“As far as industry is concerned, getting rid of people and replacing them with AI is the business opportunity.”—Douglas Rushkoff, “Artificial Creativity”

It’s all about the business.

In 1996 William Gibson published the second novel in his Bridge trilogy, Irodu. Set in a near-future Tokyo, Rez, the lead singer of a rock band wants to marry Japanese pop singer Rei Toei. She — and I use that pronoun advisedly — is an embodied AI agent. In an echo of Star Trek: TNG’s 1992 “The Perfect Mate,” Rei adapts her style and sound to suit each of her fans.

Rei — always learning about the environment, bringing in more information for her model — is so convincing that Rez, who is “real,” is serious about wanting to marry her. The novel ends without it being clear whether the nuptials happen. Seem ridiculous, like something that can only be imagined in the world of speculative fiction, right?

Gibson has observed, “The future is already here. It is just not evenly distributed.”

Enter Tilly Norwood into the over-distributed 25 square miles in southern California known as Hollywood.

Norwood is an AI-generated actress.

She was generated by Particle6, an AI-production company based in the UK, using DeepFame, a program that not only creates hyper-realistic-appearing objects (including people) but allows them to be interactive and adaptive. Rei Toei-like.

“We want Tilly to be the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman,” Particle6 founder Eline Van der Velden told Broadcast International in July.

Norwood was introduced to the world at the 2025 Zurich Summit, an industry conference held during the Zurich Film Festival, by Van der Velden who, in addition to Particle6, runs a talent studio, Xicoia.

Norwood was shown in a two-minute film titled “AI Commissioner.”

This led to stories about agents wanting to represent Norwood, which caused consternation among some in the acting community. And they ought to be concerned.

At present, AI technology is such that there are limitations of length of the features produced. The two-minutes of Norwood is actually impressive.

Consider filming real actors. There is the object. Work is done one day, then more is done the next. The actor is the same. And this can continue on day after day, or if there is a long break, chances are the person looks like she did on day one, or can be made up to look the same.

But when an AI actor is created, there is a lot of data that must be coordinated such that the actor is able to look realistic, which is a challenge for the model (you’ve probably heard of the “Six-finger problem,” with AI-generated models having an additional digit on their hands, something that is caused by the model not “knowing” but predicting and reconstructing.). And consider something as simple as a shadow. When shooting a human actor, the shadow comes along for the ride. When shooting an AI actor, that has to be calculated. More data to manipulate and coordinate.

So for now, things are short. For now.

Herzog Objects

At the 82^nd International Venice Film Festival this past August Werner Herzog was presented with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by Francis Ford Coppola.

Herzog is no stranger to pushing  the production envelope — Fitzcarraldo, for example, was about moving a boat thorough the South American jungle and actually moved a steamship through the jungle. Often his movies deal with the theme of people trying to achieve the impossible.

He has made feature films, short films and documentaries.

He clearly has profound knowledge of not only movies, but how they are made and what it takes to make something that has sufficient spark such that they are special.

On a recent episode of “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” the conversation between the host and Herzog went to AI. And of the AI-generated films he has seen, Herzog said, “They look completely dead. They are stories, but they have no soul.”

Tilly Norwood has no soul.

Will it matter?

The Entertainment Industry

“. . .creativity is different from the creative industries – as different as music is from the music business. AI’s are fine for industry. They’re a product of industrial age thinking, and reinforce its values. They do not create, they model. That’s what ’large language models’ means.” — Rushkoff

And there it is. Industries. Business.

AI becomes another tool to create product. To create content. To fill the seats of theaters. To sell more popcorn and sodas.

During the 2023 negotiations between the studios and SAG-AFTRA, AI was a sticking point that was ultimately resolved.

The contract includes definitions for “Employment-Based Digital Replicas” and “Independently Created Digital Replicas.” Both require the actors’ permission for use. The latter is interesting in that it is “created without your [the actor’s] participation and used in a motion picture in which you did not work.” However, it is clearly the actor’s image for which compensation must be provided.

But there is another type, one which probably didn’t get the attention it deserves. It is the Tilly Norwood type:

“A ‘Synthetic Performer’ is not a digital replica, it is a wholly digital reproduction that appears to be a person, but does not resemble a recognizable performer and is not voiced by a person.”

Synthetic Performers show up on time. They never get sick. They never have demands.

They can look like whatever the film maker wants them to look like. Young, old, fat, thin, long-haired, bald, voluptuous. . .and all one Synthetic Performer.

Will Folks Buy It?

Will the audience accept this? Well, did you enjoy the 2 minute pilot above?

Another way of looking at this is: have you ever watched a movie performed by actors you’ve never seen before yet found to be at least engaging, perhaps something on a terrestrial TV station between 30-minute infomercials? Pretty much, yes.

Or consider Marvel movies, where many of the actors either wear something obscuring their faces or are digitally transformed into something they aren’t (e.g., The Hulk). Would it matter if they were Synthetic Performers?

And finally: audiences clearly have an affinity for movies that have no physical actors: the highest grossing movie in the world this year is Ne Zha 2, and in 2024 America’s highest grossing movie was Inside Out 2, both animations.

So it seems like people might buy it. At the moment technical limitations mean that Tilly Norwood can only star in Tik-Tok length videos. But with, for example, an Oracle-sized engine pumping her through Skydance and onto ParamountPlus, it won’t take long to test a very cheap new celebrity proposition.