It\u2019s not every day that a complete newcomer sets Hollywood abuzz, but Tilly Norwood is no ordinary starlet. With a growing social media following and talk of a major agency signing her, she seems to have it all.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s just one catch: Tilly Norwood isn\u2019t a person. She\u2019s a collection of code, and her popularity is causing a massive rift in the entertainment industry.<\/p>\n
Introduced over the summer by Dutch actor and producer Eline Van der Velden, Norwood is the first talent from Xicoia, a newly launched AI talent studio and spin-off of Van der Velden\u2019s Particle6 Productions.<\/p>\n
Tilly Norwood first appeared publicly in July in a comedy sketch titled AI Commissioner, produced by Particle6. On her Facebook page, Norwood wrote, \u201cI may be AI generated<\/a>, but I\u2019m feeling very real emotions right now. I am so excited for what\u2019s coming next!\u201d<\/p>\n At last week\u2019s Zurich Summit, an entertainment and tech industry event, Van der Velden told Deadline<\/a> that interest in Norwood had grown rapidly.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we first launched Tilly, people were like, \u2018What\u2019s that?\u2019, and now we\u2019re going to be announcing which agency is going to be representing her in the next few months,\u201d she said. Van der Velden has described her goal as making Tilly \u201cthe next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman,\u201d citing economic pressures and creative flexibility as reasons for exploring AI talent.<\/p>\n Norwood maintains social media profiles on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, where she appears as a photogenic, dark-haired woman in her twenties, living a seemingly normal life in London. Her accounts have attracted tens of thousands of followers in just a few months.<\/p>\n Not everyone in Hollywood is welcoming the rise of synthetic performers.<\/p>\n SAG-AFTRA, the actors\u2019 union representing more than 160,000 performers, issued a statement opposing the replacement of human actors with AI.<\/p>\n \u201cCreativity is, and should remain, human-centered. The union is opposed to the replacement of human performers by synthetics,\u201d SAG-AFTRA\u2019s statement said<\/a>.<\/p>\n SAG-AFTRA stressed that Norwood is \u201cnot an actor, it\u2019s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers \u2014 without permission or compensation. It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion, and, from what we\u2019ve seen, audiences aren\u2019t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience.<\/p>\n The union warned that using synthetic performers without complying with contractual obligations could put human actors\u2019 livelihoods at risk, noting that studios must provide notice and negotiate with the union whenever AI performers are employed.<\/p>\n Some actors have voiced strong opposition to Norwood\u2019s rise:<\/p>\n On \u201cThe View,\u201d Whoopi Goldberg said, \u201cYou can always tell them from us. We move differently, our faces move differently, our bodies move differently.\u201d Van der Velden defended Norwood as a \u201ccreative work \u2014 a piece of art\u201d rather than a replacement for human actors.<\/p>\n She compared AI to other storytelling tools such as animation, puppetry, or CGI, saying, \u201cJust as animation, puppetry, or CGI opened fresh possibilities without taking away from live acting, AI offers another way to imagine and build stories. I\u2019m an actor myself, and nothing \u2014 certainly not an AI character \u2014 can take away the craft or joy of human performance.\u201d<\/p>\n Van der Velden expressed hope<\/a> that AI will eventually be accepted as part of \u201cthe wider artistic family,\u201d adding that audiences are primarily interested in compelling stories, not whether a performer is human.<\/p>\n The uproar comes nearly two years after SAG-AFTRA strikes over AI protections rocked Hollywood<\/a>. While AI technology<\/a> is already widely used in visual effects, Norwood represents a step closer to synthetic actors taking roles traditionally filled by humans.<\/p>\n The post AI Actress Stirs Up Hollywood Controversy, Draws Outrage from Union and Stars<\/a> appeared first on eWEEK<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s not every day that a complete newcomer sets Hollywood abuzz, but Tilly Norwood is no ordinary starlet. With a growing social media following and talk of a major agency signing her, she seems to have it all. There\u2019s just one catch: Tilly Norwood isn\u2019t a person. She\u2019s a collection of code, and her popularity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5129"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Push back from SAG-AFTRA and actors<\/h2>\n
\nMelissa Barrera criticized agents considering signing Norwood on Instagram, writing, \u201cHope all actors repped by the agent that does this, drop their a$$. How gross, read the room.\u201d
\nMara Wilson questioned the ethics of using composite images of real people: \u201cAnd what about the hundreds of living young women whose faces were composited together to make her? You couldn\u2019t hire any of them?\u201d
\nEmily Blunt called the idea \u201creally, really scary,\u201d while Eiza Gonzalez described it as \u201chorrific and terrifying.\u201d<\/p>\nDefense from the creator<\/h2>\n