AI Actress Tilly Norwood Condemned by Sag-Aftra: Tilly 'Is Not an Actor ' (variety.com)

SAG-AFTRA has publicly condemned “Tilly Norwood,” an AI-created onscreen persona developed by Particle6 and promoted by creator Eline Van der Velden, after claims that talent agents were interested in signing the synthetic “actress.” The guild called Tilly “not an actor” and argued the character was generated by a computer program trained on the work of “countless professional performers — without permission or compensation.” SAG-AFTRA warned that synthetic performers risk displacing real actors, devaluing human artistry, and violate contractual rules that require notice and bargaining when a producer intends to use a synthetic performer. High-profile actors including Whoopi Goldberg and Emily Blunt publicly expressed alarm, while Van der Velden defended Tilly as an artistic tool akin to CGI or animation. For the AI/ML community, this episode crystallizes technical and policy flashpoints: dataset provenance and consent, copyright and right-of-publicity exposure when models are trained on actor performances, and the operational need for governance mechanisms in production use (e.g., contractual notice, bargaining, and compensation). It also highlights market and perceptual limits—industry leaders question whether audiences accept purely synthetic performers—and signals a likely wave of legal, ethical, and standards debates over how generative models should be trained, attributed, and regulated in creative industries.