As the creator of the controversial “AI actress”. Tilly Norwood, Eline Van der Velden it has become a matter of scrutiny, and worse. Seconds before signing off on our Zoom call, he received a death threat – one of the many he’s been receiving these days – and had to call the police to file an immediate report.
“They say there is no humanity behind it, and then they follow someone behind, that makes me happy,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.
But for all public critics – from Emily Blunt to Sophie Turner again Whoopi Goldberg – Van der Velden says the public outcry is very different from the conversations he has had with “loads and loads” of prominent people in the industry behind closed doors. “The response has been overwhelming,” he says, declining to name names. “The directors have reached out. They want to work with Tilly.”
A real life broadcaster Michelle Waldron calls out to Zoom. “People who were discouraged four months ago have seen the light and understand, because many people were taken by the headlines without reading the whole story.
Tilly was first introduced in July 2025 with the comic “AI Commissioner,” produced by Van der Velden’s company Particle6. “In the UK, the answer is freedom,” Van der Velden said, highlighting the use of AI from the European Union’s AI legislation.
It was a very different story when Hollywood caught wind of Tilly, after it was presented at the Zurich Film Festival in September. Suddenly, the film industry was up in arms, prompting strong criticism from SAG-AFTRA, talent agency Gersh and a host of actors. While Van der Velden knew there would be backlash, he predicted a similar response to the CGI character Lil Miquelawho is signed to CAA and has over 2 million Instagram followers. (FWIW, Miquela signed with the agency as a “digital creative,” not an actress.)
Van der Velden suggests that people should be free. “It’s made for entertainment purposes. It’s not meant to be taken too seriously. It’s meant to be fun. AI is funny,” he said. Besides, Tilly isn’t even 100% AI.
“I think we should make that very clear I am Tilly,” added Van der Velden. “I’m working as a representative now. We do a lot of performance photography. So I’m the one playing, and we’re doing a mix.”
I ask Van der Velden to explain to me what that hybrid model of performance capture and AI entails – starting with how Tilly is trained.
“People think we take actors, and train Tilly on actors. That’s not how it works at all. We use publicly available programs – LLMs trained on publicly available data,” he said, though he added that he doesn’t have complete control over that data.
“I have no idea what they are trained, but me think trained with publicly available, public domain information. So those are home videos posted online, photos, whatever, right? And they are actually less likely to be trained in movies and films and actors. For training how to do it, home videos are great, because they don’t work. You don’t want it trained by actors. Let’s hope it’s trained on official, publicly available data.”
Van der Velden says his idea is for actors to engage with emerging technology, like the one behind Tilly, to “see the future” for themselves, instead of completely avoiding AI, which is here to stay.
“It takes a lot of human ingenuity to make something that good. There is art in it,” he said. “Look, this sh-t happened. I’m not happy that it’s trained on everything I do, either. We’re all in this together. I’m not going to get a check for anything I’ve been trained on. It’s trained on every single person. It’s like, everything in public, and maybe things that shouldn’t have been trained, I do good things and move on.”
As the Big 3 unions begin labor negotiations with major studios this week, artificial intelligence – and Tilly herself – will be hot topics. Van der Velden is not too worried. In fact, he was glad that Tilly became a prominent actress.
“That’s why I made him: so that he can be considered to prepare the industry to think, ‘How are we going to move forward with these types of actors?’ Because I think I’m not the only one,” he said. “I fully agree with SAG and how they will move forward in these negotiations to make room for these types of characters.”
As for SAG’s chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Irelandthe recent suggestion that contracts could include financial penalties for using AI players, making them as expensive (or maybe more) than humans, Van der Velden “absolutely agrees.”
“There is a real human effort behind it. It takes a lot of time and effort for me to produce a game with Tilly and my team,” he said. “I think people will work with Tilly for other reasons, as they work with certain stars, because of the exposure it gives.”
Does all that alignment mean you’re talking to SAG? “I can’t talk about that, but let’s just say I’m with SAG, and I wish them the best in future negotiations.”
Van der Velden, an actor and comedian himself, maintains that he did not create Tilly with the intention of taking over the work of human actors – even joking that Tilly is the only actor to quit. his.
In his mind, after the dust settles, the manufacturing world will open up to embrace both human and AI operations, with clear distinctions and expectations for each type of star. “I think Tilly should live in a country where real actors don’t live, because I wouldn’t like her to take a job as a real actress, even though I’m behind it,” he said.
“Don’t worry – we’ll still have human actors. That was always the plan. The plan wasn’t for him to replace someone in a real movie or TV series. He’s in his own world, and that’s where he’s going to stay.”
