Tilly Norwood, controversial AI actress, is facing yet another PR crisis. The ChatGPT-generated star is the young, British, slightly haunting handiwork of AI talent studio Xicoia. You might recall that back in September, news that several actual talent agents were vying to represent Tilly drew plenty of scrutiny and set off serious concerns throughout Hollywood.
“The problem with this is that [actors] are suddenly up against something that’s been generated with 5,000 other actors,” Whoopi Goldberg said on The View. “It’s got Bette Davis’ attitude, it’s got Humphrey Bogart’s lips… And so it’s a little bit of an unfair advantage."
“Good lord, we’re screwed,” the actress Emily Blunt said in response to Tilly. “Please stop taking away our human connection.”
Now, following that pushback from industry professionals, celebrities, and even the Screen Actors Guild, another unique sort of resistance is forming against Tilly from the general public—as she's currently being run through a classic Hollywood rumor mill. Social media users are posting completely fabricated (quite funny) testimonies of her past problematic behavior, including accusations of bigotry, violence, and bullying that any real-life actress would likely be (rightfully) cancelled for.
Wicked star Marisa Bode even joined the hate train: "I don't believe in cancel culture, but I am beefing with actress Tilly Norwood," she joked in a TikTok.
The alleged behavior itself is obviously egregious and would be no laughing matter in any other context. However this trend's become a sardonic way for people to confront the bleak reality of Tilly’s growing prominence. Despite all this mounting backlash, more resources are being poured into expanding her presence. Last week, Xicoia announced that it will be hiring writers, editors, and a social media manager to build out the “Tilly-verse.”
Eline Van der Velden, Xicoia’s CEO and the person responsible for creating this Tilly Norwood character, claims her company is not trying to replace human performers with the AI-powered persona. She also says they didn’t anticipate the amount of hate this effort would receive. “As an artist, you always try to resonate something that will provoke interest and thought in the audience," she said in a recent interview. I underestimated the effect that Tilly would have on the world.”
The resistance to Tilly—and the threat she poses to human artists—isn’t isolated. Xania Monet, an AI R&B artist who was signed to Hallwood Media in a $3 million deal earlier this year (and even had a song chart on the Billboard 100 last month), raised similar concerns about outsourcing creative work, the type reliant on human emotion and experiences, to AI bots.
She (it?) received heavy criticism from R&B artists like SZA, Kehlani, and Victoria Monet. “This is so beyond out of our control,” said Kehlani in a now-deleted TikTok. “Nothing and no one on Earth will ever be able to justify AI to me.” Beyond her high-profile critics, Xania faced her own cancellation-worthy accusations from trolls, similar to those of Tilly's.
This week, iHeartRadio announced its "Guaranteed Human" initiative, which bans any and all AI-generated content from its stations. But on a wider scale, these AI personas are still seeing success and being invested into, and that's not been significantly deterred by concerns about their ethics and necessity.
So social media users who could feel a bit powerless against their expanding presence have resorted to the defiance they know best: trolling. And since Xania and Tilly aren’t even real, they seem like fair game for provocative false accusations. The trend allows fans to process the rapidly shifting state of Hollywood through humor (and creativity) as the industry threatens to rely far less on human ingenuity and authenticity in the coming years.
If widespread retaliation against these AI persona projects won’t convince companies like Hallwood Media and Xicoia to scale back, perhaps flooding search results for these names with allegations of egregious behavior might leave a dent in their influence. Maybe it'll even dissuade any gullible parties who mistake Tilly or Xania for real people from supporting them? (Long shot, but we all have an aunt who constantly falls victim to AI cat videos.) But if nothing else, the grassroots movements to cancel figures like Tilly and Xania have allowed the public to band together and resist this unprecedented era of entertainment through the art of unserious mockery.
