{"id":289441,"date":"2025-11-17T19:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T19:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/289441\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T19:00:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T19:00:10","slug":"creator-of-ai-actor-tilly-norwood-announces-ai-assisted-history-channel-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/289441\/","title":{"rendered":"Creator of AI actor Tilly Norwood announces AI-assisted History Channel series"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Text<\/p>\n

Listen to this article<\/p>\n

Estimated 4 minutes<\/p>\n

The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

The production company behind controversial AI “actor” Tilly Norwood has announced plans with History Channel in the Netherlands for a new AI-assisted historical travel series.<\/p>\n

Straten van Toen (Streets of the Past) is a planned 10-part series commissioned by Hearst Networks,<\/a> a partial owner of History, that will see historian and author Corjan Mol travel to different Dutch sights, which will then be made to appear as they did during various historical periods via generative artificial intelligence tools.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Particle6, a U.K.-based AI production company founded by Eline Van der Velden, will use archival material such as paintings, engravings and photographs to generate the scenes Mol will interact with. <\/p>\n

Example scenarios given were Amsterdam’s popular shopping and commercial street Rokin, as it hosted the creation of the world\u2019s first stock exchange in the 17th century, and Utrecht\u2019s historic Janskerkhof square \u2014 the site of resistance organizing during the Second World War.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AI entering industry<\/p>\n

This is not the first AI-involved historical re-enactment program to hit the airwaves; earlier this year, Hearst announced the documentary series Killer Kings, which it promoted as<\/a> \u201cthe first documentary TV series to air using fully AI-generated imagery.\u201d <\/p>\n

And in what Variety deemed<\/a> \u201ca deliberately provocative move,\u201d the U.K.\u2019s Channel 4 broadcast a documentary entirely hosted by an AI presenter last month.<\/p>\n

Speaking at this year\u2019s International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, Portuguese filmmaker Susana de Sousa Dias said the incursion of generative AI into the world of documentary threatened its very existence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a risk here that not only can spectators believe fake archival footage, but that people will stop believing anything,\u201d she said. \u201cIn both cases, our regime of truth is completely shaken.\u201d<\/p>\n

Particle6 gained widespread notoriety earlier this year after it announced the release of synthetic performer Tilly Norwood, an AI-generated creation that studios could theoretically utilize in their productions. <\/p>\n

In a statement addressing widespread concerns, Van der Velden argued that AI isn\u2019t a replacement for actors. Instead, she characterized it as simply \u201ca new tool\u201d akin to computer-generated imagery (CGI), allowing creators to solve problems in new ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI offers another way to imagine and build stories,\u201d Van der Velden wrote. \u201cI\u2019m an actor myself, and nothing \u2014 certainly not an AI character \u2014 can take away the craft or joy of human performance.\u201d<\/p>\n

WATCH | How AI-generated ‘actor’ Tilly Norwood is drawing Hollywood outrage:\"\"<\/p>\n

AI-generated \u2018actress\u2019 Tilly Norwood draws Hollywood backlash<\/p>\n

European AI production company Particle6 says their AI-creation Tilly Norwood has generated a lot of interest, but Hollywood actors including Emily Blunt, Melissa Barrera and Whoopi Goldberg as well as the SAG-AFTRA union have come out against the AI character.<\/p>\n

Still, the move was widely opposed by acting unions. <\/p>\n

In a statement of their own, Hollywood\u2019s main performers’ union, SAG-AFTRA, argued the creation of Tilly Norwood \u201cdoesn\u2019t solve any \u2018problem\u2019 \u2014 it creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.\u201d<\/p>\n

The question of how much \u2014 and even whether \u2014 generative AI should be used in film and television has become an existential question for the industry. Earlier this month, actors Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine became the latest performers to license their likenesses to a generative AI company.\u00a0<\/p>\n

McConaughey tasked AI-voice generation company ElevenLabs with using AI to create an audio version of his newsletter in Spanish, read in McConaughey\u2019s own voice. And Caine both licensed his voice for use in the company\u2019s ElevenReader text-to-voice app, and cleared it for use in their AI-voice marketplace.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Others in the industry have attempted to push back at AI involvement. Toni Collette, Ralph Ineson and Odessa A\u2019zion are among the actors who have expressed anger at the Tilly Norwood tool \u2014 with some suggesting a boycott of talent agencies that use it.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHope all actors repped by the agent that does this, drop their a$$,\u201d Scream actor Melissa Barrera wrote on her Instagram story. \u201cHow gross, read the room.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":["post-289441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}