AI Actor Tilly Norwood Releases Debut Single And Music Video

In the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI), London-based Particle6 presents an AI actress, Tilly Norwood, who has just dropped a debut single and accompanying music video. This comes ahead of Norwood’s official AI acting launch coming this year and showcases a new entertainment world where AI characters “live, interact and work.”

The song, “Take the Lead”, is motivated by a recently published essay written by Eline van der Velden, Norwood’s creator and CEO of production at the company Particle6 and its AI talent studio Xicoia.

Velden recounts that the song’s lyrics were linked to last year’s massive backlash in Hollywood after news that agents were looking to sign on AI talent.

Released on Tuesday, the music video features Norwood engaged in various activities while singing. She was shown singing on top of a London roof, swinging from a disco ball, in the bath and flying through the clouds on a blow-up flamingo.

A post at the top of the video reads: “The following production was made by 18 real humans — from production designers to costume designers to prompters, editors, and an actor. No flamingos were harmed in the process.”

Norwood was created last year to showcase the company’s AI technology. However, it was met with immediate hostility, particularly from the acting community.

Lyrics of the song include: “When they talk about me, they don’t see the human spark, the creativity … I’m just a tool, but I’ve got life.”

Van der Velden has noted that Tilly the AI is, and has always been, a tool to test the creative capabilities and borders of AI, and not to take anyone’s job.

“As an actor myself, I have loved bringing Tilly alive for this video and feel that the ability to use performance capture in this way now, to inhabit an AI character fully, is a phenomenal way to bring an unknown actor like me closer to the craft,” she said.