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

The AI “actor” known as Tilly Norwood will be used in a new feature film entitled Misaligned, its first lead role as a digitally generated persona.

Particle6, the AI production studio that built Norwood, is developing and producing the film, the company told Global News in an email statement. The company is led by comedian and writer Eline Van der Velden.

The film will be a comedy-drama and “hybrid production with traditional film and TV professionals — such as directors, writers and editors — working alongside AI specialists, with AI training and mentorship built into the production itself, Van der Velden said.

“Our work this year has proven something we suspected all along,” she continued, “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.”

“The filmmakers who thrive in the next decade will be the ones who bring decades of storytelling instinct to these new tools, and Misaligned is where we put that to work at feature scale,” she continued.

Real-life actors and other film industry players sounded the alarm about Norwood’s inception last year after public discourse emerged about the possibility that Norwood would sign with a talent agency, which prompted a response from the Screen Actors Guild.

“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,” it said.

“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,” the statement concluded.

Emily Blunt spoke about Norwood during an episode of the Variety Awards Circuit Podcast, referring to the idea of an AI actor as “terrifying.”

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

When Blunt was shown a photo of Norwood, she said, “No, are you serious? That’s an AI? 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.”

Misaligned is described by Particle6 as a “coming-of-age story infused with existential AI chaos” that follows Tilly, an AI being with no real body, no childhood, and no lived experience of its own, whose existence is brought into question by a seductive rogue bot from the dark web.

“The film will absolutely be funny, chaotic and self-aware — very Tilly,” van der Velden added. “But underneath it, there’s something deeper about identity, performance, and our very human fears around AI. And yes, art will most definitely be imitating life.”

The movie marks the production studio’s first step into the feature film space, having previously focused on branded content.

— with files from Global News’ Katie Scott