Tilly Norwood is Not the Problem
(Human) actress Betty Gilpin has some “blunt advice” for (AI) “actress” Tilly Norwood in an open letter (Norwood does not have anything so analog as a mailing address) published in the Hollywood Reporter. Gilpin writes about the work, the human understanding, the transcendent connection with the audience that goes into acting, and also about the commercial value of a fresh young face and body.
While we can both be loneliness candy, you can’t be the other invisible thing. The vital thing. The thing we have to keep shoulder-tapping one another about in meadows, actors or not. Tilly, you can not look up and become half of someone. Because you are no one.
SAG-AFTRA, the actors union, was quick to condemn, saying the AI was “using stolen performances,” an amalgam of a remix drawn from a century of human actor digital input. Emily Blunt’s response to Tilly Norwood was simple and direct. “Good lord, we’re screwed.” On Saturday Night Live, host Amy Poehler addressed her directly: “You’ll never be able to write a joke, you stupid robot.”
Tilly Norwood is an AI “actress” in a “comedy sketch” video created by Eline Van der Velden of Particle6, which calls itself “The World’s Leading AI Production Studio.” Their website boasts, “Our approach doesn’t just speed things up — it raises the bar. We deliver detail, precision, and cinematic excellence that rivals, and often surpasses, traditional production.” [Emphasis in the original.]
Their video includes just a few seconds of Tilly Norwood, smiling, on the red carpet, and crying on the “Graham Norton Show.” It is an obvious publicity stunt. It succeeded in drawing global attention to the impressive capabilities of the firm, though it still has fewer than 4000 subscribers on YouTube.
What is impressive is the technique and, yes, creativity of the human beings who created not just Tilly Norwood but an entire “cast” of diverse and very believable characters in a range of very believable settings in the video, talking to us in cheekily satiric terms about developing new television shows with the help of AI.
Tilly Norwood got the most attention because she/it is very pretty, which is always attention-getting, and because she is presented to us as an actress. I was more interested in the other characters, who were far more expressive and, to my eye, believable. Tilly Norwood’s few seconds of crying looked more like the humorously exaggerated faces of Huntr/x watching the Saja Boys in “K-Pop Demon Hunters.”
The reality, if I may use that term, is that everyone in the video is equally an AI “actor” and that every detail from the scripts to the earrings and glasses to the clutter on the desk and the costumed “background actors” was thought up by humans. So was that witty dialogue making fun of human-generated but unimaginative ideas for television.
There is a lot to be concerned about with AI, especially as the “reality” it produces becomes less sloppy and more difficult to distinguish from the truth. Look at this video imagining what Marvel movies might have looked like with actors from the 1970s.
The jobs most at risk in Hollywood are not the actors, but the people who design and build sets, the background actors (both already sidelined by CGI in many cases), possibly the stunt perfomers. As for the screenwriters, I suspect they are safe, despite the premise of the Particle6 video. There is not a lot of difference between a human screenwriter or studio executive coming up with “How about ‘High Noon’ set in a space station? Or maybe a high school?” “How about a gender switch for ‘What Women Want’ or ‘Oceans 11?’” and a computer-generated mash-up. Can we imagine AI replacing the underpaid screenplay-readers? Maybe. Are they more likely to produce interchangable multiplex fodder than Sundance audience-award winners? Well, if so, our current market already produces both.
There are a lot of very serious policy, law, and morality questions about AI, from deep fakes to the kind of DOGE failures like using AI to assign tariffs that included an island with no human occupation. Authors, filmmakers, musicians, and other artists dismissed as “content creators” must have a right to determine who gets to use their creative work, for what purpose, and what they get paid. The copyright laws will need a major overhaul.
That is why it is a mistake to get too agitated about Tilly Norwood.
Since the earliest days of animation, the artists who created characters like Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Cinderella, and The Little Mermaid have had mirrors on their desks to help them create a human reality in the facial expressions, even for the most heightened, non-human, and fanciful characters. That is why Looney Tunes legend Chuck Jones called animators “actors with pencils.”
It wasn’t Carl and Ellie who made us cry in the first moments of “Up.” They did not even speak. Ed Asner’s growl wasn’t heard until after that heartbreaking opening, the love story that began when they met as children, and ended with her death. It was real-life and magnificently creative human Pete Docter (now head of Pixar), who co-wrote and directed it.
I have experimented a little bit with creating AI videos, not because I plan to make a movie but because I am very intrigued by the creative challenge of imagining the descriptions required in the prompts, which have to be as vivid and detailed as a movie screenplay, covering everything from the movements to the dust motes in the soft sunlight from the window with the gingham curtains. It’s not hard to make George Washington turn and bow. But when I tried to create an auburn-haird actress in a green gown getting ready to go to an elegant party, somehow the elbow-length gloves I asked for just magically appeared at a random moment.
What makes video like the one produced by Particle6 go viral are the “actors with code” behind it. No pixels will ever replace movie stars. Former head of MGM Dore Schary used the term “motor” for that ineffable quality of charisma, expressiveness, and, most often, stunning good looks, that makes a rare group of performers magic on screen. It can’t be predicted or taught. And it can’t be manufactured. But it can be revealed.
There are people who are not as beautiful as Emily Blunt and Betty Gilpin who have stories to tell that we will want to see. Let them tell those stories through prompts and code. Tilly Norwood will never get an agent or win an acting Oscar. But the people who create her and the other characters in the video should qualify. Perhaps, as when the Best Animated Feature category was added after “Beauty and the Beast” made it as a Best Feature nominee opposite the live action films, we will see a new category for “Best Digital.”
