When generative AI executive Eline Van Der Velden says she didn’t expect the AI creation she calls Tilly Norwood to suddenly become the center of a firestorm of Hollywood attention, we kind of believe her: When Van Der Velden made her controversy-sparking comments about the AI character back in September, it was in a small panel at an industry-focused offshoot of the Zurich Film Festival. It was only when trade publication Deadline took one of Van Der Velden’s assertions—that the character was being courted by a Hollywood agency—at face value and ran with it (touting the provocative headline “Talent Agents Circle AI Actress Tilly Norwood”) that anything Van Der Velden had been doing started to generate attention. And then more and more attention: That included commentary from high-profile creators condemning the “AI actor,” major talent agency WME saying it would never sign such a creation, and a statement from actor’s union SAG calling for increased oversight and regulation of exactly these sorts of products.
None of which was apparently what Van Der Velden was expecting, per a new interview done with—who else?—Deadline. That’s even as she can’t help but reveal how ambitiously worrying some of her plans for the future are, including assertions that she’s got another 40 characters like Tilly Norwood in the works, at various, less-polished stages of development.
We should note that Van Der Velden actually runs two generative AI companies, both with Hollywood designs. Tilly Norwood and her 40 future siblings (“The plan is to create 40 very diverse characters to build her whole universe and to play in this AI genre with a whole new cast”) are all produced by a company called Xicoia, which its creator said is meant to create stars in this vision she has of a new genre of filmmaking, entirely made with AI assets. (With human oversight, she’s quick to caution: The small number of shorts that have featured the Tilly Norwood character—which look, to our eye, like some very obvious gen-AI garbage—apparently have a team of at least 15 people overseeing the character’s use.) Van Der Velden is quick to distance that more provocative work from that of her company Particle6, which she envisions being used by Hollywood studios to create imagery for specific shots in movies and TV shows. (She specifically cites some of the work done on last year’s The Brutalist as an example of where Hollywood is already toying with using the tech to tweak or supplement existing footage.)
But despite doubling down on the assertion that her company is being swarmed with offers to use the Tilly Norwood character—including, yes, from talent agencies—Van Der Velden also swears up and down that she’s trying very hard not to be evil with all this. While noting that she can’t protect people in the industry from systemic change, she asserts that she’s shot down offers to use the model as a replacement for an existing actor in projects, which she says would cross too many ethical lines. (She also, understandably, is touchy around issues surrounding image rights, noting that the character was supposedly created without infringing on any existing performer’s likeness—and that she wants her creation’s own appearance to have similar rights.) As with many advocates for AI tech, Van Der Velden bald-facedly asserts that this technology will actually be good for both human creativity and the environment, despite seeming, on the face of it, to be entirely about grinding down both to churn out slop that looks significantly worse than what people could make. She also very deliberately notes that she doesn’t think Tilly Norwood or her ilk will be replacing anyone any time soon:
There is going to be this creative renaissance. There is going to be a change. I think, the traditional film and TV genre will carry on for quite awhile, for a long time, maybe forever, as its own genre. And I think we’re still going to film with actors. I want to see real actors on screen. I don’t think AI characters will be in that space–it’s not going to move that fast.
