AI ‘actor’ Tilly Norwood to appear in feature film set in the ‘Tillyverse’

An artificial intelligence persona, Tilly Norwood, is set to make its debut as the lead in a new feature film titled 'Misaligned.' Developed by AI production studio Particle6, led by comedian and writer Eline Van der Velden, the film is described as a comedy-drama and a "hybrid production."

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AI can support premium narrative filmmaking, but only with substantial amounts of human craft, skill, judgement and time. That’s not a limitation of the technology. That’s the point.

Van der Velden explained that the production will integrate traditional film and TV professionals with AI specialists, embedding AI training and mentorship within the process. "Our work this year has proven something we suspected all along," she stated, "AI can support premium narrative filmmaking, but only with substantial amounts of human craft, skill, judgement and time. That’s not a limitation of the technology. That’s the point."

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To be clear, ‘Tilly Norwood’ is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers, without permission or compensation.

However, the emergence of AI 'actors' like Norwood has sparked significant backlash from Hollywood. The Screen Actors Guild issued a statement clarifying that "'Tilly Norwood' is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers, without permission or compensation." The guild argued that AI lacks life experience and emotion, and that audiences are not interested in content detached from the human experience.

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It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion and, from what we’ve seen, audiences aren’t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience.

Actress Emily Blunt echoed these concerns, calling the concept of an AI actor "terrifying." Upon seeing a photo of Norwood, she expressed alarm, pleading with talent agencies, "Please stop. Please stop taking away our human connection." 'Misaligned' is described as a coming-of-age story about an AI being questioning its identity, exploring themes of performance and human fears surrounding artificial intelligence.

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Does it disappoint me? I don’t know how to quite answer it, other than to say how terrifying this is.