{"id":52965,"date":"2025-09-30T15:12:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T15:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/52965\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T15:12:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T15:12:09","slug":"emily-blunt-brands-ai-generated-actress-tilly-norwood-terrifying-as-she-begs-talent-agencies-not-to-sign-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/52965\/","title":{"rendered":"Emily Blunt brands AI-generated actress Tilly Norwood &#8216;terrifying&#8217; as she begs talent agencies not to sign her"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\"><a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/tvshowbiz\/emily-blunt\/index.html\" id=\"mol-682df190-9e02-11f0-94f5-496b8051f0bd\" class=\"class\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Emily Blunt<\/a> has branded AI-generated actress Tilly Norwood &#8216;terrifying&#8217; and begged talent agencies not to sign her.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\"><a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/sciencetech\/ai\/index.html\" id=\"mol-685a31b0-9e02-11f0-94f5-496b8051f0bd\" class=\"class\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">AI<\/a>\u00a0talent studio Xicoia created the digital performer, a young brunette actress, with Eline Van der Velden unveiling the project at the Zurich Film Festival.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Tilly is already attracting interest from talent agents, and Smashing Machine actress Emily confessed she is horrified at the prospect.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Shown a report on Tilly, Emily told <a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" class=\"class\" rel=\"nofollow noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2025\/film\/news\/emily-blunt-ai-actress-tilly-norwood-reaction-1236534547\/\">Variety<\/a>: &#8216;Does it disappoint me? I don&#8217;t know how to quite answer it, other than to say how terrifying this is.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;No, are you serious? That&#8217;s an AI? Good Lord, we&#8217;re screwed. That is really, really scary. Come on, agencies, don&#8217;t do that. Please stop. Please stop taking away our human connection.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Emily, 42, was told that Tilly was designed to resemble a composite of familiar stars and was told she was designed as &#8216;the next <a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/tvshowbiz\/scarlett_johansson\/index.html\" id=\"mol-6850bbd0-9e02-11f0-94f5-496b8051f0bd\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Scarlett Johansson<\/a>&#8216;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"imageCaption\">Emily Blunt has branded AI-generated actress Tilly Norwood &#8216;terrifying&#8217; and begged talent agencies not to sign her (Emily seen on Monday)<\/p>\n<p>   <img decoding=\"async\" id=\"i-7d2b9ba1f4fd59de\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/102573933-15148569-Emily_Blunt_has_branded_AI_generated_actress_Tilly_Norwood_terri-a-19_17592418478.jpeg\" height=\"423\" width=\"634\" alt=\"Emily Blunt has branded AI-generated actress Tilly Norwood 'terrifying' and begged talent agencies not to sign her (Emily seen on Monday)\" class=\"blkBorder img-share\" style=\"max-width:100%\" loading=\"lazy\" \/>   <\/p>\n<p class=\"imageCaption\">AI talent studio Xicoia created the digital performer, a brunette seemingly teenage actress (Pictured), with Eline Van der Velden unveiling the project at the Zurich Film Festival<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Emily replied: &#8216;But we have Scarlett Johansson.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">And she isn&#8217;t the only Hollywood star voicing their criticisms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Scream actress Melissa Barrera branded the arrival of Tilly &#8216;gross&#8217; as she\u00a0posted an Instagram Story about the news.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">She captioned it: &#8216;Hope all actors repped by the agent that does this, drop their a$. How gross, read the room.(sic)&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Matilda star Mara Wilson was equally horrified.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">She said: &#8216;And what about the hundreds of living young women whose faces were composited together to make her? You couldn&#8217;t hire any of them?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Whoopi Goldberg blasted the idea on The View and insisted the AI model would have an &#8216;unfair advantage&#8217; &#8211; but noted the technology isn&#8217;t yet &#8216;seamless&#8217; enough for them to pass as human.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">She said: &#8216;The problem with this, in my humble opinion, is that you are suddenly up against something that&#8217;s been generated with 5,000 other actors. It&#8217;s got Bette Davis&#8217; attitude, it&#8217;s got Humphrey Bogart&#8217;s lips.<\/p>\n<p>   <img decoding=\"async\" id=\"i-622d0f7a81a10eab\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/102574097-15148569-AI_talent_studio_Xicoia_created_the_digital_performer_a_brunette-a-20_17592418478.jpeg\" height=\"1047\" width=\"634\" alt=\"AI talent studio Xicoia created the digital performer, a brunette seemingly teenage actress (Pictured), with Eline Van der Velden unveiling the project at the Zurich Film Festival\" class=\"blkBorder img-share\" style=\"max-width:100%\" loading=\"lazy\" \/>   <\/p>\n<p class=\"imageCaption\">Shown a report on Tilly, Emily told Variety : &#8216;Does it disappoint me? I don&#8217;t know how to quite answer it, other than to say how terrifying this is&#8217; (Emily seen in March 2024)<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;It&#8217;s got my humour, thank you darling. And so it&#8217;s a little bit of an unfair advantage.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;You know what? Bring it on. You can always tell them from us. We move differently, our faces move differently, our bodies move differently&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;Hopefully, we&#8217;ll be able to hold on because what this means is AI in the workplace \u2014 not just my workplace, but in every industry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;Some industries are using AI now. People talk about people are so lonely they don&#8217;t have a connection, if you stick with this, with AI, you won&#8217;t have any connection to anything but your phone.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Simu Liu also condemned the project, sarcastically writing on his Instagram Story: &#8216;Movies are great but you know what would be better is if the characters in them weren&#8217;t played by actual humans but by AI replicas approximating human emotion.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">Creator Eline insisted Tilly is &#8216;a piece of art&#8217; and she doesn&#8217;t view AI as a &#8216;replacement&#8217; for real people.<\/p>\n<p>   <img decoding=\"async\" id=\"i-c50af9e378f4fc55\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/102573935-15148569-Shown_a_report_on_Tilly_Emily_told_Variety_Does_it_disappoint_me-a-21_17592418479.jpeg\" height=\"793\" width=\"634\" alt=\"Shown a report on Tilly, Emily told Variety : 'Does it disappoint me? I don't know how to quite answer it, other than to say how terrifying this is' (Emily seen in March 2024)\" class=\"blkBorder img-share\" style=\"max-width:100%\" loading=\"lazy\" \/>   <\/p>\n<p class=\"imageCaption\">Tilly (Pictured) is already attracting interest from talent agents, and Smashing Machine actress Emily confessed she is horrified at the prospect<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">She wrote on Instagram: &#8216;To 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;Like many forms of art before her, she sparks conversation, and that in itself shows the power of creativity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;I see AI not as a replacement for people, but as a new tool, a new paintbrush. Just 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=\"mol-para-with-font\">&#8216;I&#8217;m an actor myself, and nothing \u2013 certainly not an AI character \u2013 can take away the craft or joy of human performance.&#8217;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emily Blunt has branded AI-generated actress Tilly Norwood &#8216;terrifying&#8217; and begged talent agencies not to sign her. AI\u00a0talent&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[539,7246,93,61,60,8387,1489],"class_list":["post-52965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-dailymail","tag-emily-blunt","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-scarlett-johansson","tag-tvshowbiz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}