The debut of Tilly Norwood, a computer-generated “actor” presented by a UK production company as a photoreal on-screen performer, has triggered a surge of opposition from across Hollywood and a formal rebuke from the actors’ union, prompting the project’s creator to defend the character as an artistic experiment rather than a substitute for human talent. Dutch actor-producer Eline Van der Velden, who unveiled the character at the Zurich Summit industry conference on 27 September, said the reaction had been fierce but insisted the point of the project was to explore new tools, writing on social media that Tilly “is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work – a piece of art,” and that, like animation or CGI, it should be understood as a way “to imagine and build stories.”
SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents US film and television performers, responded with an unusually blunt statement telling studios and agencies that “creativity is, and should remain, human-centered,” and that Tilly “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 union said such “synthetic performers” have “no life experience to draw from” and warned producers that the use of digital stand-ins must conform to contract obligations negotiated after last year’s strikes. The message underscored long-running concerns about consent, compensation and control as AI tools advance into areas once considered the exclusive domain of people.
Van der Velden introduced Tilly at Zurich with a brief parody clip purporting to show a television pitch built entirely with AI, and told attendees that multiple agencies were in discussions to represent the character. In interviews and public remarks around the event, she said the aim was to build a profile comparable to an emerging human star — “the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman” — and argued that audiences care most about story rather than whether a performer “has a pulse”. The unveiling formed part of a broader launch for Xicoia, an AI talent venture spun out of her London-based production company Particle6.
Backlash arrived within hours. Actors Melissa Barrera, Yvette Nicole Brown and Natasha Lyonne castigated the prospect of an agency deal, with Lyonne urging a boycott of any agency “that engages in this.” Emily Blunt, shown a report about the character during a press interview, reacted by saying: “Good Lord, we’re screwed. That is really, really scary. Come on, agencies, don’t do that. Please stop. Please stop taking away our human connection.” On ABC’s The View, Whoopi Goldberg called the concept an “unfair advantage” over human performers. Those responses — mixing labour-rights objections with arguments about authenticity — reflected unease that accelerated during the 2023 strikes over how AI might be deployed by studios.
By mid-week, the resistance had spread to top agencies. WME’s leadership said publicly that the company would not represent the character — “We represent humans,” co-chairman Richard Weitz said at a conference — while Gersh Agency president Leslie Siebert told an industry trade that the creation was “frightening” and that “we’re not going to be that agency.” The stance from two of Hollywood’s most powerful shops signalled that, whatever exploratory conversations may have occurred, any attempt to slot a non-human creation into existing talent pipelines will meet immediate institutional pushback.
The project’s creator has framed the controversy as a misunderstanding of intent. In a statement that was also posted to Tilly’s social channels, Van der Velden said the character was conceived to “spark conversation,” adding that AI-generated performers should be assessed “as part of their own genre” rather than set up in a zero-sum rivalry with human actors. She has also argued that AI can resolve budget constraints that limit independent filmmaking and that studios are already “quietly embracing” the technology. Those assertions accompanied claims that several agencies were “circling” a representation deal and that an announcement could follow within months, even as major agencies have distanced themselves.
SAG-AFTRA’s formal statement sought to draw a bright line on definitions and process after a year in which the industry’s contracts were rewritten to address digital replicas, consent and residuals. “Producers should be aware that they may not use synthetic performers without complying with our contractual obligations,” the union said, emphasising that introduction of such characters typically triggers notice and bargaining requirements. The union’s framing, which rejects the notion that a digital figure can be called an “actor,” sets legal and rhetorical markers that studios and agencies will have to navigate if they wish to experiment with AI-driven personalities in union-covered work.
Amid the argument about what the character is, the person behind it and the company she built have become part of the story. Van der Velden, a performer turned entrepreneur, founded Particle6 a decade ago in London and has used it to explore automated production processes as well as traditional live-action work. Xicoia, the offshoot she launched publicly days before the Zurich presentation, promotes the idea of “hyperreal digital stars” that can be directed, cast and marketed across film, television and social media. The company has pitched cost savings of up to 90% on certain kinds of content and has distributed short clips of Tilly doing mock interviews, walking red carpets and appearing in genre-style teasers.
Reuters described the Zurich debut as a twenty-second “appearance” in a spoof about building a show entirely with AI, with the character shown as a British-accented ingénue. The agency noted that experts remain sceptical of whether such creations can carry stories that depend on human empathy, quoting USC researcher Yves Bergquist on the limits of “synthetic” performers and their difficulty in forging the bond with audiences that live actors routinely achieve. That scepticism sits alongside legal uncertainty about the datasets and image sources used to train the generative tools behind the character’s look and motion.
The social feeds created for Tilly mimic the rhythms of a working actor’s online presence — screen tests, coffee shop snapshots, and promotional voiceovers announcing her “first on-camera role.” The account’s bio offers a wry nod to the conceit — “You’ll either get it or pretend you don’t. I’m a creation” — positioning the profile as a knowingly artificial persona. Those channels have also served as a distribution point for the studio’s defence of the project, amplifying Van der Velden’s insistence that the character is “a creative work” that should be “welcomed… as part of the wider artistic family.”
Union officials, meanwhile, have drawn a direct line from the present dispute to last year’s contract fights, arguing that any erosion of human labour through “synthetics” must be resisted at the outset. In that context, the language of the SAG-AFTRA statement — “no emotion,” “no life experience” and the charge that the character is built on work taken “without permission or compensation” — reads as a signal to members and producers that the union’s red lines remain intact. It also reads as a warning to agencies that the union sees representation of computer-generated figures as implicating the same issues that drove the strikes, from consent to economic displacement.
The public interventions from WME and Gersh reinforced that message. “If she has a future, it won’t be at WME,” Weitz said, adding, “We represent humans.” Gersh’s Siebert called the idea “frightening” while acknowledging that the question would keep returning as technology evolves. Those comments, delivered from senior executives rather than anonymous insiders, suggested that within the traditional ecosystem of development, packaging and casting, there is limited appetite to treat a digital construct as a client, particularly while labour tensions over AI remain acute.
Yet the character’s creators have kept the focus on experimentation and economics. Van der Velden has argued that AI can widen participation by lowering the cost of making visually ambitious material, and has suggested that after initial resistance “people are realising” the tools expand rather than restrict creative options. In that telling, Tilly is a proof-of-concept for workflows that combine human writing, direction and postproduction with synthetic performance layers that can be iterated quickly. It is a pitch that resembles earlier moments of technological change in entertainment, though one that now collides with workforce anxieties sharpened by a year of strikes and layoffs.
Industry commentators have pointed out that even if agencies and unions close ranks against a digital “actor” in guild-covered productions, studios could still deploy similar tools in marketing, branded content and territories with looser labour protections. Reuters reported that Tilly’s launch drew interest from some quarters even as condemnation mounted, and that the core critique from sceptics is that synthetic figures simply do not carry the ineffable quality that audiences expect from living performers. The Washington Post placed the dispute in a larger conversation about whether machine-generated faces and voices can ever truly substitute for a human performance on a dramatic scale.
For now, the most concrete developments are rhetorical: a pledge from top agencies to steer clear; a union directive telling producers to treat any “synthetic performer” as a bargaining matter; and a creator who says she will continue developing a digital persona despite what she has acknowledged is, at best, a chilly reception. In Van der Velden’s words, the aim is to keep the conversation going — and to ask audiences to judge the results on their own terms. In SAG-AFTRA’s words, the line is simple: “Tilly Norwood” is a character, not an actor, and the industry’s “creativity is, and should remain, human-centered.” Between those poles sits a set of practical questions — about contracts, datasets, credits and accountability — that will determine whether Tilly remains a curiosity of a trade-show panel or the forerunner of a new class of screen presence.
As the dust from Zurich settles, there is little sign that either side intends to yield. The project has highlighted how quickly the debate over synthetic performance has moved from the domain of tech demos to the core institutions of Hollywood. It has also shown that an AI-generated face can provoke the same kind of career-defining responses as a controversial executive decision: union leadership staking out territory, A-list actors invoking the sanctity of human connection, and corporate gatekeepers declaring the boundaries of their business. Whether Tilly ever receives the agency contract her creator has trailed, the reaction to her first week in the spotlight will inform how other companies proceed. For Van der Velden, the defence has been to assert that this is art. For the union and many performers, the reply has been that art requires an artist. In that unresolved space, a non-human persona has become a test case for how an industry built on people intends to handle the most human question of all: who gets to be an actor.
