Hollywood celebrities outraged over new 'AI actor' Tilly Norwood (www.bbc.com)

Dutch comedian Eline Van der Velden has launched Tilly Norwood, a photoreal “AI actor” with a social media presence and a fully AI-generated sketch, and said the synthetic performer is in talks with talent agencies. Branded as a creative “character,” Norwood’s Instagram features headshots, faux screen tests and spoof appearances; Van der Velden also discussed an AI production studio and a new AI talent agency, Xicoia, at a recent Zurich summit and hinted at forthcoming high-profile projects. The unveiling provoked swift backlash from SAG-AFTRA and A‑list actors (Emily Blunt, Natasha Lyonne, Whoopi Goldberg), who argue Norwood was trained on “the work of countless professional performers,” undermining labor protections won after the 2023 strikes and risking stolen performances and lost jobs. The case foregrounds technical and ethical issues for the AI/ML community: generative visual and video models can synthesize convincing performers but rely on training data provenance, consent, and copyright—raising urgent needs for standards like dataset auditing, provenance tracking, robust watermarking/detection, and clear contractual rules for synthetic content. Whether positioned as art or a commercial talent product, Norwood crystallizes the legal, policy and tooling challenges that researchers, studios and platforms must address as synthetic humans move from novelty to potential industry tool.