Tilly Norwood is the actress I most want to see on the big screen, or perhaps the little screen, if she gets her own TV show. She is beautiful, but not too intimidating. She has a natural smile, and is just the right amount of British—a touch exotic but still familiar with her posh accent. Her Instagram has immaculate standards of presentation.
If you do not already know, Tilly is not an actual human being. She—it?—is an AI creation.
And recently, several agents have been bidding for the right to represent her. They think Tilly will be a “hot property,” and this time around you can interpret that term literally.
Tilly was concocted by actress, comedian, and technologist Eline Van der Velden, working through her AI company Xicoia. (Van der Velden is quite real; she’s a Dutch actress and has a master’s degree in physics.)
Not everyone is happy about this gorgeous innovation. SAG-AFTRA, the union representing performers in U.S. entertainment industries, protests. They state: “The union is opposed to the replacement of human performers by synthetics.” They also claim that Tilly’s makers are ripping off human actors, because presumably the creation of Tilly involved training on their performances. Or in SAG-AFTRA’s words: “. . . It creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.”