{"id":319025,"date":"2026-03-03T05:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T05:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/319025\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T05:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T05:10:10","slug":"the-ai-actress-tilly-norwood-is-getting-a-whole-tillyverse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/319025\/","title":{"rendered":"The AI ‘Actress’ Tilly Norwood Is Getting a Whole ‘Tillyverse’"},"content":{"rendered":"

You might remember Tilly Norwood<\/a>, a completely AI-generated \u201cactress\u201d character that was unveiled last summer to significant industry backlash.<\/p>\n

Well, get ready for more. Xicoia, an AI talent studio founded by the British production company behind Tilly, just announced that it\u2019s preparing to unveil a whole \u201cTillyverse\u201d<\/a> later this year.<\/p>\n

The plan is to build an entire digital universe to house Tilly Norwood\u2019s \u201ccompelling narrative arc<\/a>,\u201d which will include everything from \u201cher humour, daily life and career choices to how she interacts with fans across various platforms,\u201d CEO Eline Van der Velden said in a press release. The company is also working on unveiling a bunch of new AI characters to accompany her.<\/p>\n

Xicoia is bringing in Mark Whelan from Amazon Prime Video to lead the charge, calling it the company\u2019s first major hire. At Prime, Whelan led social strategy for some European shows like Clarkson\u2019s Farm and The Grand Tour, according to Deadline<\/a>. At Xicoia, Whelan will also oversee \u201cthe creation of bespoke AI talent commissioned by third parties,\u201d the company said, \u201cpositioning Xicoia at the forefront of the rapidly emerging AI entertainment economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA few short months after Tilly was revealed to the world, this appointment now signals a period of rapid acceleration. Xicoia isn\u2019t just experimenting with AI talent \u2014 it\u2019s building IP at scale and redefining how talent is created, developed and experienced in the AI era,\u201d the company said in the press release.<\/p>\n

Tilly drew ire from all corners of the industry when \u201cshe\u201d debuted last summer and creator Eline Van der Velden said she was talking to talent agencies that wanted to sign Tilly. So far, the AI character is still not signed to any talent agency, but Van der Velden told Deadline<\/a> in November that \u201cthere are lots of agencies that are interested.\u201d<\/p>\n

The actors union SAG-AFTRA released a statement<\/a> at the time saying that Tilly Norwood was just \u201ca character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers\u2014without permission or compensation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Early last month, the union began renegotiating its contract, and as of Monday, at least, are still deep in negotiations, according to union president Sean Astin<\/a>. The current contract is set to expire by June 30, and it was signed<\/a> following the historic Hollywood strikes of 2023<\/a>. One of the key<\/a> issues of disagreement that led to the 2023 strike was the use of AI in film. According to reports<\/a>, AI is yet again a major topic of discussion this time around.<\/p>\n

The AI industry has made huge leaps in video and image generation since 2023, from viral product launches by Google\u2019s Nano Banana Pro<\/a>, ByteDance\u2019s Seedance 2.0<\/a>, and OpenAI\u2019s Sora<\/a> to a completely AI-generated short movie that almost got a national theatrical run<\/a> by AMC this month, until the chain backed away following criticism.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see whether the AI developments and the expansion of the \u201cTillyverse\u201d will factor into the union contract renegotiations, not just for SAG-AFTRA but across Hollywood, as both the Writers Guild of America and the Directors Guild also gear up to renegotiate contracts in the next couple of months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You might remember Tilly Norwood, a completely AI-generated \u201cactress\u201d character that was unveiled last summer to significant industry…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125,39695],"class_list":{"0":"post-319025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-tilly-norwood"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}