A year after announcing AI actress Tilly Norwood at Zurich Film Festival’s Summit, Particle 6 founder and Norwood creator Eline van der Velden returned to the Swiss event to look back at the backlash her creation has faced since. Asked if she could have ever predicted the furore around Norwood, van der Velden said not in her “wildest dreams.”
“But I had programmed her to become the most famous AI actress, so I don’t know how she did it, but she did, which is slightly scary,” she added.
“It’s such an odd conundrum, the sort of negativity and then the positivity at the same time,” she continued. “At Particle 6, we’ve grown eight-fold. We have four departments; we’re big in AI advertising, film and TV, we’re doing a lot of co-productions and original commissions. We do a lot of AI consultancy, bringing AI workflows into other studios and production companies.”
Over the course of the last year, said the exec, “a lot of people have realized that AI is coming, and that was the point of Tilly.” “I built her as a physicist actress; I felt like I needed to bridge the gap in communication between the tech and the entertainment industry.”
“As opposed to writing a boring white paper about what was happening with AI, I thought: Let’s create something to show people that will engage them and make them sit up and take action so that the creative industry can stay ahead as opposed to being completely and utterly taken over by the tech industry,” noted van der Velden.
After a few minutes trying to sort out a tech blip with the “traditional technology,” e.g., a problem with the HDMI cable, van der Velden introduced Norwood herself on stage, opening her creation to moderator and audience questions. Asked who she would like to work with, Norwood said Tom Holland and Olivia Colman, “but only if it were their digital twins joining me in an AI production.”
Norwood also spoke on the backlash, calling it “quite an introduction.” “My name kind of went everywhere. It’s funny. Nobody hated me particularly; they just sort of hated the future.”
When asked if she had met U.S. agents for representation, Norwood displayed the ironclad media training of an A-list Hollywood star. “Well, I’m certainly in a unique position there. I mean… The industry is still figuring out what to do with AI, so it’s not quite like having a traditional agent in Hollywood just yet. I mostly work on AI films, so it’s a bit of a different lane.”
Van der Velden also spoke about possibly getting Norwood an agent, saying the studio soon realized that they “don’t really need” an agent for the actress. “I think she’s big enough as it is. We get loads of offers in, we’ve said no to anything where she would be in a traditional film, because that’s not what she’s made for. We don’t need it at the moment, so if that makes people happy, that’s fine by me.”
“But also what saddens me about that is that it means that the traditional industry can’t participate in this new tech and that means they fall behind,” she added. “Is it a positive? Is it a negative?”
After watching Norwood’s now infamous malfunction while speaking with Piers Morgan on live TV, when the AI actress randomly began speaking Cantonese, van der Velden said: “Look, I think it’s all not to be taken too seriously. We built Tilly to be a funny interface that gets people alert to where the tech is at. The point is: China’s a big partner. Do we need regulation? What are the guardrails? Those are the conversations I want people to have coming here.”
Van der Velden also spoke about Particle 6’s latest project, “Storm Dogs.” Yesterday, the studio announced that “Stuart Little” and “The Lion King” filmmaker Rob Minkoff joined the AI film as an executive producer. Minkoff will work with CEO van der Velden and the studio’s team over the coming months to develop the story, characters and screenplay ahead of production.
“Storm Dogs,” an original idea from van der Velden, is a family adventure comedy-drama set in an English village during a devastating storm. The film will combine live-action performances with photorealistic animated characters. Human roles will be filmed conventionally, while the dogs and toddler will be created through an approach that brings together live-action performance, traditional filmmaking techniques, and emerging AI tools. The project is currently in early development, with production targeted for 2027. Distribution has not yet been announced.
The exec said that Minkoff was one of the first people to reach out to her following Norwood’s announcement.
“Yeah, so what was amazing about this backlash last year is actually it meant that a lot of talent reached out to us very secretly,” she said. “We were signing tons and tons of NDAs. Everyone was scared to take the hit, and I totally understand. Fortunately, we were in a position where we’d already taken the hit, so it didn’t matter anymore.”
Of “Storm Dogs,” she said, what is “great” about it is that they can now “animate mouths in a way that we’ve never been able before and give us expression to the animals that’s never been possible before. It is really enhancing the storytelling. And so that’s how I see it. It needs to aid the storytelling and the creative work that we’re making if we’re going to use AI.”
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