AI-Generated 'Actress' Tilly Norwood Could Be the First Signed by a Talent Agency: SAF-AFTRA and Hollywood Reacts

"Well, over twenty years later, the future Simone imagined is here. But this time, no one is keeping her artifice a secret. At the Zurich Film Festival last week, London-based AI studio Particle6 announced the launch of a new company, Xicocia, which Deadline describes as an "AI talent studio designed to create, manage, and monetize" its stable of digital characters."

"The launch unveiled Particle6's first AI-generated "actress": Tilly Norwood, a twenty-something Gen Z brunette whose defining personality trait seems to be "iced coffee." To be clear: Tilly Norwood is not real. She is a digital figurine, the end result of a million ones and zeroes. She lives in a hard drive, not rain-soaked London as seen in her AI-overrun Instagram. But she is now all over Particle6's website, which suggests how much the company is hinging their AI endeavors on Tilly"

"On September 27, Deadline reported that an unnamed talent agency signed on Tilly Norwood as a "client." With AI slop overwhelming the internet and questions of labor, economics, and the diminished importance of human perspective in art wrapped up in the disruption, the Tilly Norwood case encapsulates so much of the resentment artistsin particular actorshave toward the dizzying rush to an increasingly AI-fascinated world."

Al Pacino starred in Simone (2002), about a director who creates a computer-generated actress named Simone. Twenty years later, London-based AI studio Particle6 launched Xicocia at the Zurich Film Festival to create, manage, and monetize AI-generated digital characters. Particle6 debuted Tilly Norwood, a twenty-something Gen Z brunette with a curated "iced coffee" persona who exists as digital code and an online presence. An unnamed talent agency reportedly signed Tilly as a client. Particle6 features Tilly prominently on its website, signaling reliance on virtual talent, while debates over labor, economics, artistic value, and actors' resentment accompany the rise of synthetic performers.

Read at www.esquire.com