As the person behind the face of AI’s existential threat looming over Hollywood, Eline Van der Velden comes off as a cheery, slightly self-deprecating woman, whose smile momentarily turns into embarrassment when her small Bichon Frisé dog walks across the video conference screen (I confirmed it was not an AI construct).
While few people in entertainment know Van der Velden or her production company, Particle6, they may recognize her creation, the synthetic AI “actor” Tilly Norwood. It was the Dutch actress, writer and comedian who set off a firestorm of controversy when she claimed in late September that talent agencies were in talks to represent Norwood.
At the time, Norwood seemed to be the manifestation of the entertainment community’s fear that AI was finally taking its jobs — and creative soul. “Hope all actors repped by the agent that does this, drop their a$$,” “Scream” actress Melissa Barrera said on Instagram in response. “How gross, read the room.” Talent agencies quickly shut the door on signing Norwood.
But Van der Velden has changed her tune. After backtracking and vowing that Norwood wouldn’t take any roles from real actors in December, she brought Norwood back last week via a surreal, fantastical video that pushed back against the criticism in a tongue-and-cheek way. In an interview with TheWrap on Friday, she said that Hollywood directors were “working” with Norwood, and that we would see her acting in the next couple of months. She also talked about the opportunity for actors to create AI-generated “digital twins” of themselves and how the technology is democratizing access to movie-making tools.
Call it the redemption arc of Tilly Norwood. The AI actor isn’t here to steal anyone’s job. For the music video, Norwood was “played” by Van der Velden via motion capture, a capability that was added to generative AI in the last few months, making her less of a wholly “synthetic” actor than before. Van der Velden, who said “Tilly shouldn’t be taken too seriously,” stressed the AI actor was designed to spark a conversation and raise awareness for the technology.
“Tilly is a creation of the zeitgeist and the fear that everyone feels,” she said. “She’s supposed to provoke thoughts and discussion with what we do with her. You’re supposed to feel something after watching art. And I think people feel an emotion.”
Some of those reactions got extreme, with Van der Velden calling the death threats she received a “low point” of the backlash. “It might be hatred, but it’s still an emotion,” she added.
The anger subsided quickly, especially as critics found the early videos of Norwood to be pretty rough — something Van der Velden acknowledged. The industry has also found other AI boogeymen, with the latest being Bytedance’s SeeDance 2.0, which let one user quickly generate a scary-real clip of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in a fist fight, prompting rapid cease-and-desist orders from the various studios.
In comparison, Norwood doesn’t seem like that much of a threat.
“I’m just having fun. I’m just creating stuff,” Van der Velden said. “We’re not taking anybody’s jobs. We’re creating jobs. We’re expanding our creative minds to do new things.”
The synthetic actor debate
While Van der Velden has backed off of Norwood as a fully “independent” actor, she believes that there’s opportunity for her to serve as an avatar of sorts, with the Dutch actress filling in the expressions and movement via motion capture like she did on her music video.
But imagine instead of Norwood, there was a photo-real, idealized version of Van der Velden generated from AI that could be inserted into a movie or show. The idea of a “digital twin” is something some actors are already playing with, she said. They could do their performance in pajamas or with no makeup on, and that footage could be paired with AI tools that could insert the digital twin of that actor in full makeup, wardrobe and proper lighting on the set of a medieval castle or spaceship.
Think of it as the next iteration of greenscreen work.
“A lot of actors will enjoy it because it’s more like a rehearsal room, where you can actually focus on the craft and emotion as opposed to what you look like or what you’re wearing,” she said.
On the flip side, she also envisions unknown actors with strong talent doing the motion capture work for a famous IP character, and finding fame the same way the voice actresses and singers of Netflix’s animated smash “KPop Demon Hunters” became household names.
Some actors are already doing this on the voice side, with Matthew McConaughey becoming an investor in ElevenLabs, who collaborated with him to create a digital twin of his iconic voice.
Still, others remain skeptical about it — at least in the near term. Guy Ronen, chief operating officer of AI startup Arcana Labs, said that live-action continues to be a challenge for the technology, particularly the nuances of an actor’s performance.
“The flaws of human beings and what you bring to the table is way more valuable,” he said.
Consumers are also skeptical about AI actors, according to an NRG study done in conjunction with TheWrap. The survey found 56% of people felt AI actors would never be able to deliver a human-caliber performance.
Keeping this topic on the forefront are the various union contract talks now in process. A key point of those discussions are the very synthetic performers that Norwood shined a spotlight on. SAG-AFTRA has a proposal for studios to pay a royalty every time they employ an AI actor, eliminating the cost-savings benefit of the technology.
Van der Velden said she created Norwood as a way of pursuing film and TV projects without the negative aspects of fame before things blew up.
“I made an actor because that’s what I know because I was an actor and I wanted to play multiple different characters through her,” she said. “I just thought it was quite ironic that actually I had to come out and do a lot of public facing stuff and interviews, but the whole point was for me not to have to do that and to let Tilly take it away.”
Still, between the tease of Norwood working with Hollywood directors and a vague promise of a “Tillyverse” world for actors to play in, it’s clear Van der Velden and the AI actor aren’t done.
Maybe they’ll find some space for her dog too.
