Meet the Creator of the AI Actress Hollywood Loves to Hate: “You’re Gonna See a Lot of Tilly Norwood Next Year”

At the top of a Zoom call with Eline Van der Velden, she immediately wonders if Tilly Norwood will be able to join meetings too. “I think she will, very soon,” beams the Dutchwoman.

You might remember the news that talent agencies were looking to sign the computer-generated “actress” completely blew up Hollywood in September. Norwood, a British 24-year-old created entirely by Van der Velden and her team at production outfit Particle6, was taking flak from entertainment’s top stars.

Toni Collette, Emily Blunt, Amy Poehler, even Ryan Reynolds in a Mint Mobile ad, you name it — seemingly no one was happy at the prospect that we’d be seeing Norwood in our films and TV shows. SAG-AFTRA slammed Norwood in a statement released in the midst of the uproar: “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.”

Now, Van der Velden is setting the record straight. “I was having to let the story run for a bit, but there was a lot of misinformation,” says the Particle6 founder, who started out as an actress among the likes of Lily James and Daisy Ridley at a top performing arts school in the U.K. “I totally sympathize with Hollywood being in a really tough spot at the moment, and actors thinking this is coming for their job. That’s not what our plan is with Tilly at all.”

Over three years, Van der Velden and her team at the London-based outfit have been building “a universe” of AI characters — led by their “English rose,” a brunette woman with big, brown eyes. And up until September, they believed the world had run in to synthetic characters before. “We followed the Lil Miquela playbook, in a way,” says Van der Velden, referencing the fictional character with over two million Instagram followers. “But I know why Tilly blew up a bit more than Lil Miquela,” she continues. “Lil Miquela looks less real.”

The looming threat of AI has continued to panic the film and TV industry, and regulations around the craft became a linchpin clause through the writers and actors strikes in 2023. Though AI’s use in the industry already spans myriad visual effects tools, many still worry that AI could, one day, replace actors — or at least illegally use their likeness. All of a sudden, Tilly Norwood became emblematic of that fear.

“I want to watch real actors emote — I enjoy that very much. I’m an actor myself. I love the art,” explains Van der Velden, “but I do want to prepare people that I think the tech will get there with good direction. And we’ve done that. You can direct these computer-generated characters in a certain way, just like you can, in animation, direct Elsa [in Frozen].”

Below, Van der Velden unpacks everything Particle6 is planning, including projects with some of the industry’s top writers, directors and actors. She discusses how difficult the backlash around Tilly Norwood was, personally — “the police had to be notified” — what source material was used to build the AI character and why she’d love Tilly Norwood to stand for “a moment of change in history:” “That’s what I’m really proud of, the conversation that she sparked. It’s a conversation the industry needed to have.”

What was your initial reaction to the backlash and why do you think it was so strong?

VAN DER VELDEN I couldn’t have predicted it, because in the U.K. we had released [Tilly Norwood] and there wasn’t the same reaction at all. People were quite interested in it. I think it’s because in the U.K., we’ve had hardship in our industry for a long time, so we’re a bit more open, maybe, to experimenting with new things. We’ve also been instructed by the government to really accept this AI stuff. [British prime minister Keir Starmer has continuously repeated his ambition to make the U.K. one of the world’s AI “superpowers.”] So everyone has opened their mind to it.

But I totally sympathize with Hollywood being in a really tough spot at the moment and actors thinking this is coming for their job. That’s not what our plan is with Tilly at all. So there was a lot of misinformation there, and I can totally understand that with that misinformation, they freaked out. Also, I am in a bubble of all this new tech, [but] I remember the first moment I saw this tech — I was blown away. I was like, “Oh, no way.” If you haven’t had those moments, those little moments of going “no way,” then suddenly you see Tilly. It is very overwhelming.

How did you cope with the outrage personally? Was it difficult?

VAN DER VELDEN People send me all sorts of messages — some really heartfelt messages, being like, “Why are you doing this? This is an art form that I love.” And we’re trying to respond to every single one of them, because I also love this art form. I’m not trying to take that away from anybody, right? I want to keep actors on screen, and I want to keep watching actors act. I see this as a completely new genre of creativity, like animation and computer-generated characters. But you also get comments that are really horrible, really horrible, so much so that the police had to be notified. I don’t appreciate them as much. I do really appreciate the heartfelt messages, and we also have really positive messages. So there’s three buckets.

It all began with a report about agencies circling to sign Tilly. I’m presuming you can’t tell us which agencies those are?

VAN DER VELDEN No, no. I can confirm that those conversations are still happening. We’ve changed our position a little bit. I think agents are going to change as well. I’m sure everyone in the whole world is having to adapt a little bit to this new era. And we’re looking for an agent who’s really keen on the AI characters and who’s going to specialize in that.

[PUBLICIST] MICHELLE WALDRON But the first AI character was actually signed by CAA in 2020 [CGI influencer Lil Miquela], so that’s why we didn’t expect this to blow up in the way that it did. Because it wasn’t the first.

VAN DER VELDEN I mean, we followed the Lil Miquela playbook, in a way. We thought that what she did was really cool, so we were trying to do that.

So you believed AI characters were already out there?

VAN DER VELDEN Well, [they are]. Lil’s got millions of followers. She’s got an agent. She goes on the red carpet. I know why Tilly blew up a bit more than Lil Miquela — Lil Miquela looks less real. So the positive about this backlash is that lots of people came to our site because they were like, “Wow, they’re really creating premium stuff. And I suppose it sort of signaled that we stand for premium characters and content.

Have you found that interest in Tilly has increased or decreased since the uproar?

VAN DER VELDEN Oh, massively increased. Enormously so. We’ve had wonderful people reach out to us — critically acclaimed and award-winning writers, directors, actors.

Wow — so no one said, “Listen, I was really interested, but seeing how the tide has turned, I’m gonna pull out?”

VAN DER VELDEN Not a single one.

Why is Tilly a British teenager?

VAN DER VELDEN She isn’t a teenager. She’s 24! She shouldn’t be [a teen], this character, but … with some characters, it might be beneficial for them to be AI from an ethical standpoint.

Do you mean children actors and animals, for example?

VAN DER VELDEN [Nodding.] Dangerous situations. So, why is Tilly British? This is actually really important. I came to the U.K. when I was 14 to study musical theater at [U.K. performing arts school] Tring Park. And I studied with wonderful actors like Lily James and Daisy Ridley. I’m very proud to have been trained in the U.K., creatively. I think it’s a creative powerhouse in the world. And so I was basically future-proofing in my head, going, “OK, well, the U.K. is this great creative powerhouse. We must be part of this next creative renaissance that’s about to happen.” And what’s a huge export of Britain? It’s British talent. So in this new AI genre, this new creative renaissance, we should also have British AI talent be a big part of that. I thought, “OK, we’re going to make a British actress first, and she should become the be all and end all in the AI genre of British AI actors.” And then the process was really long, really tedious, in order to get to that final tidy look.

I played around for ages with text prompts and got very airbrushed images… I think we used about 10 different tools. We would up res, we changed the skin, we changed the freckles, we changed her hair. I think we did about 2000 iterations until we finally had one image that we were like, “That’s it. That’s her. That’s who we want.” We wanted her to resonate with a specific drama audience. We wanted her to resonate around the world and not look too specific. [We wanted her to] represent Britain and the mix that it is. There was a lot of thought that went into it, especially into the name as well: Tilly Norwood — we tried to find a name that nobody had in the world. So this is why Ryan Reynolds couldn’t even find a Tilly Norwood. He could only find a Natalie Norwood for his Mint Mobile stunt that he did. Then there was a problem trying to keep her consistent, because the tech wasn’t quite there once we found her. It’s a long journey and a lot of human input and a lot of human work.

I think people were really curious to know about the source material for Tilly. Were there any real actors you were inspired by?

VAN DER VELDEN No, not really. We were just going for that English rose character. I believe if you’re going to make a digital twin of anyone, you need consent and you need fair compensation for that. So because we didn’t want to breach anyone’s likeness, we purposely made an original. That was the whole point. We do digital twins of people with explicit consent and fair compensation, right? This had to be something completely different, so we didn’t want her to look like anyone.

How many people does it take to build a synthetic character like Tilly?

VAN DER VELDEN I mean, you can do one in a second on [Google AI generator] Veo 3 if you wanted to. But the point — and I think this goes for the case for humanity, really — is to get something that will really resonate around the world, and to be as good as Tilly, it takes a lot of work. So I think about 15 people worked on Tilly over the years.

What AI tools do you use?

VAN DER VELDEN Loads of different ones. We use the regular stuff: Veo 3, ChatGPT, threes or chat, GPT, DeepSeek, Nano Banana, Gemini. And then we have some proprietary tools as well that we build on top of the existing LLMs [Large Language Models].

We didn’t do any of the training either. We used third party tools. Just to explain about the training and copyright thing, because people think [Tilly’s] based on people’s likeness and it’s trained on people. But then they should be compensated, right? So I think those third party tools need to pay for the data that they’re training on. However, what worries me is that the actual creators and the people, because it’s trained on the whole of humanity, billions [of people] — you, me, everyone’s been put into that training data — we won’t see any of that money, right? It’s been trained on my acting stuff. So as much as I think those cases should be settled… What happens after that training is you are working with text in order to position pixels in a probabilistic position on a blank canvas. Unless your prompt says, “Make her like this person,” it’s not pulling that data from the data set. It’s pulling pixels as a probabilistic position of a brunette woman or whatever it is. So there’s no direct likeness of anyone used in the creation of Tilly. That’s really important, in my opinion.

So you have all the foundations right, a Tilly template, if you will. Now the work is done, you can just put her in any situation?

VAN DER VELDEN Yeah.

I read elsewhere that you’ve turned down offers where Tilly would be replacing a human actor. Can you elaborate on that decision?

VAN DER VELDEN Yeah, that’s really important as well. I was having to let the story run for a bit, but there was a lot of misinformation, which I hopefully am now addressing to everybody. We are trying to be a very ethical company using this new technology in Particle6. We believe in three genres: animation, traditional live action and AI genre, which will be a whole separate thing — similar to animation. In Particle6, we really want to help traditional film and TV shows to get their films made for less so that, say, if they’re missing 20 or 30 percent of the budget, they can still go ahead because we can go through their shot list and we can say, “OK, these establishing shots, these cutaways, we can do that with AI. These expensive shots that your writer was going to have to cross out, this explosion, we can still do that.”

I really value [human actors]. We don’t want to be replacing real actors unless there’s a case for a digital twin situation in there, which would be done with the consent of the actor. Tilly was never meant to be replacing real actors in that genre. She was only meant to live in her own universe, which is what we’re creating.

So in an ideal world, she would be in a 100 percent AI show with an AI cast?

VAN DER VELDEN Yeah, we call it a universe. But yes, we’re building exactly that. We’re building a universe where she will live. It’s like an onion. You have your outer layer, which is her look. Now we’re peeling off the layers, just like in any drama show, you would want a 3D character. So we’re building her personality: her sense of humor and who she isn’t. She might even be able to be a little bit autonomous, and people can talk to her.

What do you think art gains from AI?

VAN DER VELDEN I would say there’s three advantages to it. There is, firstly, that you can do it for 50 percent of the budget. You can help get more projects to green light, which means actually more jobs and reduced timeline. Secondly, it can reduce the carbon footprint massively, so up to 90 percent carbon footprint reduction if you do a scene with AI versus normal. That’s huge. And then lastly, creatively, there’s no boundaries, right?

This first layer, we’re going to just try and emulate what we shoot normally. But I think in the next few years, we will, as human beings, go beyond that, and we will make more creative things [when] we’re not bound by what’s physically possible on set. I think that will be a really, really cool creative renaissance era. I think the industry will get much bigger, and there’ll be more jobs than ever before. And [it will] not take away [jobs]. That’s never the aim of AI, in my opinion.

Do you not think we’re in a very tricky period now where we’ve not quite reached the stage of net gain when it comes to AI? People are still losing their jobs.

VAN DER VELDEN I think in our industry, people are losing a lot of jobs because of the state the industry is in. I don’t think AI is necessarily replacing those jobs. Yet, a lot of people are using AI for the first time this year. It’s not got to the point yet where they’re saying, “Oh, we’re going to fire all these people in TV because of of AI.” So I think that’s not there yet but it will happen, which is why I’m speaking out. Because I’m here to help people through this transition, this tough period, because it is going to be a transition.

We have to all upskill. There are lots of jobs if you become good at AI. So we are struggling to find people with the right skill set. And I think it’s that … we need to all upskill, to go with the new wave of tech that we’re going in and not get left behind. And I’m here to help. We’re training up lots of people in that, but we are using humans all along the way. There’s lots of jobs, right? We’re talking AI directors, AI DPs that are deciding the shots, AI production coordinators, AI production managers. There’s so much humanity that’s needed, otherwise it’s crap.

It is fascinating how extreme the reactions have been. What would you say to SAG-AFTRA who say Tilly can’t emote like a human can? Maybe that, in her own genre, she’s not meant to?

VAN DER VELDEN I agree with SAG-AFTRA that she’s a computer-generated character, whether she can emote or not like a human can. So I would also say, yeah, we’re not expecting her to right now. And I want to watch real actors emote — I enjoy that very much. I’m an actor myself. I love the art, but I do want to prepare people that I think the tech will get there with good direction. And we’ve done that. You can direct these computer-generated characters in a certain way, just like you can, in animation, direct Elsa [in Frozen].

What would you say to Ryan Reynolds or even Scarlett Johansson? I know you suggested you want Tilly to be the Scarlett Johansson of the AI genre. If they were on this call, what would you say to actors who are so against this technology?

VAN DER VELDEN I would say, “Don’t worry.” And I’m sure they’re not worried. We’re still going to want to watch Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds. We’re still going to want to watch any level of actor. Instead of AI actors being in real film and TV, I think what might happen is that you’ll get real actors wanting to be in the AI genre. We might do digital twins of them, so that they can also be an AI genre and get money from being in a different genre.

What would your dream first role for Tilly be?

VAN DER VELDEN I guess the role we’re creating for her, [which is] a whole universe we’re building around her. We’re creating a whole story around her. But I would love her to stand for a moment of change in history. That’s what I’m really proud of, the conversation that she sparked. It’s a conversation the industry needed to have. Even if she just represents that moment in time, a moment in time that we all had to go, “Right, what is the ethical way forward with the tech that we’re at? And can we do this? How are we going to embrace this from the creative industries point of view, as opposed to just being swept away by the tech industry? And how are we going to do it as a force for good?”

[We’re] talking to producers and quite well-known companies about creating AI projects that Tilly could star in. We just can’t talk about them yet because they’re in development. They’re not quite there, but yeah, coming soon. You’re gonna see a lot of Tilly next year.

Are you able to give us a timeline for when we might see Tilly’s first casting announcement?

VAN DER VELDEN I wouldn’t know when that might be, but we are going to relaunch her online. She’s needed some time to reflect after what happened, and so she’s ready to come back. She’ll be online a lot in the coming year.

How have you noticed the entertainment industry’s amenability to change around AI since you founded Particle6?

VAN DER VELDEN Not easy. It’s been three years for us that we’ve been in this new era. And I would say it’s only since February that production companies are thinking about it. They’re like, “There was a big change this year.” I think people started to open up about it, and [Tilly] will have been another big moment, I think.

That’s why I’m trying not to do too much too soon, because it takes time for people to get their heads around it. I remember myself in the past three years, how long it took me to get my head around it. So, have patience with the tech as well, because it’s also not perfect, and it’s not there yet. I encourage everyone to play around with it. It’s really fun, but yeah, then they realize it’s quite hard to create anything good, and usually that’s when they come to us.

How are you funded?

VAN DER VELDEN We’re currently completely self-funded, so we’ve been a profitable company for the past 10 years.

Are you allowed to tell me about any other characters that you have in the works?

I think we are doing the basics of the other characters, but I think we would love to focus on Tilly and complete Tilly, because then we can unleash her into the world which would be really exciting. So the focus is on Tilly for now and get one done well.

Lastly, what can you say about the AI time-travel series announced yesterday?

VAN DER VELDEN We’ve used AI to reconstruct the street in the historical time period that we’re talking about. And then sometimes one of the characters is our presenter, Corjan [Mol], which is quite funny. … It’s local little stories: for example, how the stock markets would have started in Amsterdam and what it looked like and what the people were like. It just gives you a real wholesome view of history that maybe, without a lot of imagination, you’ve never seen before. It takes the real street as a basis for it, which is really exciting. … We thought it was a positive use of AI and we’re trying to use AI as a force for good so hopefully this is a great example of that. And obviously the likeness of Corjan Mol in the AI representation was only done with explicit consent.

It’s really important to me that traditional film and TV will stay for a really long time. But there’s a hybrid 1763501993, being aided by AI. … All of these things just build over time. We look at all sorts of storytelling, not just one form.