{"id":785037,"date":"2026-07-07T15:20:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T15:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/785037\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T15:20:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T15:20:18","slug":"ai-actor-tilly-norwood-to-star-in-comedy-feature-film-misaligned-in-a-move-slammed-by-hollywood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/785037\/","title":{"rendered":"AI \u2018actor\u2019 Tilly Norwood to star in comedy feature film Misaligned in a move slammed by Hollywood"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">A controversial new film has announced that it will be led by an AI \u201cactor\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">Tilly Norwood was created by artificial intelligence company Particle6 Productions last year and quickly was the subject of major backlash across Hollywood.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">The comedy-drama, Misaligned, will be helmed by Eline van der Velden, a comedian and writer who is behind the creation of Norwood.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-3mk41m-StyledText eze0guv9\">Sign up to The Nightly&#8217;s newsletters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-1r9pdr5-StyledSubText eze0guv8\">Get the first look at the digital newspaper, curated daily stories and breaking headlines delivered to your inbox.<\/p>\n<p>By continuing you agree to our <a href=\"https:\/\/thenightly.com.au\/subscription-terms\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Terms<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/sevenwestmedia.com.au\/privacy-policies\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">The film, which will be the company\u2019s first feature-length production, is described as a \u201chybrid\u201d, bringing together traditional film and TV creatives, as well as AI specialists.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">\u201cOur work this year has proven something we suspected all along,\u201d van der Velden said in a statement published by <a class=\"css-hwy1qg-StyledTextLink ezegcyi0\" data-link-type=\"article-inline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/movies\/movie-news\/ai-actor-tilly-norwood-movie-debut-misaligned-1236638719\/\">The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">\u201cAI can support premium narrative filmmaking, but only with substantial amounts of human craft, skill, judgement and time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">\u201cThat\u2019s not a limitation of the technology. That\u2019s the point.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">Misaligned is set to be a coming-of-age story with Norwood playing the lead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">It will reportedly be set inside the so-called \u201cTillyverse\u201d where Tilly can access others\u2019 life experiences but, as an AI character, does not have any of her own.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">\u201cThings spiral when a seductive rogue bot from the dark web convinces her to abandon her guardrails and begin developing desires, impulses and ambitions of her own,\u201d read a plot synopsis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">\u201cThe more terrifyingly human she becomes, the more famous she gets, and, significantly, Tilly begins to develop shame that her very being has been built on the whole of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">However, the move towards AI has unsurprisingly seen major backlash from Hollywood.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">Last year, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists released a statement condemning the \u201ccharacter\u201d of Norwood.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">\u201c(She) is not an actor, it\u2019s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers,\u201d they said in a statement published by <a class=\"css-hwy1qg-StyledTextLink ezegcyi0\" data-link-type=\"article-inline\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/pop-culture\/pop-culture-news\/tilly-norwood-fully-ai-actor-blasted-actors-union-sag-aftra-devaluing-rcna234685\">NBC News<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">\u201cIt has no life experience to draw from, no emotion, and, from what we\u2019ve seen, audiences aren\u2019t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">Norwood was also slammed by actors Toni Colette, Emily Blunt, and Amy Poehler.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">Poehler called her a \u201cstupid robot\u201d who will \u201cnever be able to write a joke\u201d during her Saturday Night Live monologue in October.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">In response, van der Velden issued a statement on her Instagram defending her creation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">\u201cTo those who have expressed anger over the creation of my AI character, Tilly Norwood, she is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work \u2013 a piece of art,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">\u201cLike many forms of art before her, she sparks conversation, and that in itself shows the power of creativity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">\u201cI see AI not as a replacement for people, but as a new tool, a new paintbrush.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">\u201cJust as animation, puppetry, or CGI opened fresh possibilities without taking away from live acting, AI offers another way to imagine and build stories.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">\u201cI\u2019m an actor myself, and nothing \u2013 certainly not an AI character \u2013 can take away the craft or joy of human performance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-9czhig-StyledParagraph e4e0a020\">Misaligned is in early development with no release date currently set.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A controversial new film has announced that it will be led by an AI \u201cactor\u201d. Tilly Norwood was&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,2331,105,2957,1720],"class_list":["post-785037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-culture","tag-technology","tag-usa","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}