About

AI Actress Tilly Norwood refers to one of the first AI-generated actresses that was created by the AI talent studio Xicoia and promoted during a panel at the Zurich Summit as "the next Scarlett Johansson" in late September 2025. Tilly Norwood's likeness is of a teenage white girl with brown hair. The news was notably reported on by Deadline and spread by Variety on Twitter / X, where the idea of AI actresses sparked viral discourse, backlash and memes, reminiscent of similar online debates about AI influencers. Eline Van Der Velden, the creator of Tilly Norwood and the "AI talent studio" Xicoia, received notable backlash for her involvement with the project.

Origin

On September 25th, 2025, Deadline^[1] reported on Eline Van Der Velden, the Dutch-British founder of the AI production studio Particle6, announcing the launch of an AI talent studio called Xicoia, which aimed to "create, manage and monetize a new generation of hyperreal digital stars." Xicoia's official launch was scheduled to take place during a panel at the Zurich Summit, the industry strand of the Zurich Film Festival.^[2]

At the center of the launch was AI actress Tilly Norwood, according to Deadline's initial report.^[1] The actress had already been "soft-launched" on Instagram^[3] by Van Der Velden on the account @tillynorwood, which shared its first post on May 6th, 2025.

A website for the AI actress, tillynorwood.com,^[4] was created on July 25th, 2025, according to the ICANN Lookup.^[5]

On July 30th, 2025, the Particle6 TV channel shared a YouTube^[6] video called "AI Commissioner" that was described as a "new comedy sketch that playfully explores the future of TV development" in the video's description. On Facebook, ^[7] the Tilly Norwood account said that it was the AI actress's first role. It received over 163,800 views in two months.

On September 28th, 2025, Eline Van Der Velden officially launched Xicoia and Tilly Norwood during a Zurich Summit panel, as reported on by Deadline^[8] and Variety.^[2]

Overall, the story was largely publicized by the X^[11] account @FilmUpdates on September 27th, which echoed Deadline's reporting in a tweet, gaining over 20.4 million views and 5,900 likes in two days.

Spread

Discourse about Tilly Norwood and the concept of an AI actress continued to spread online in late September 2025.

For instance, on September 27th, 2025, X^[12] user @ralphineson quote-tweeted @FilmUpdates, writing, "Fuck off." The post gained over 213,000 likes in two days.

Later on September 27th, Redditor Shoe_boooo shared a screenshot of @FilmUpdates's tweet to the /r/BrandNewSentence^[15] subreddit, gaining over 6,500 upvotes in two days.

On September 28th, 2025, TikToker^[16] @nicholasjanzen shared a video on the topic in which he explained some of the news and gave a critical opinion of Tilly Norwood's creation. The video received over 103,900 likes in a day.

Also on September 28th, the Tilly Norwood Instagram^[13] account posted a written statement addressing the backlash, written by Eline Van Der Velden. It received over 140 likes in a day.

On September 29th, 2025, Variety^[9] reported on Van Der Velden's response and shared a post on X^[10] publicizing the article.

The tweet received over 2.3 million views in a few hours, largely due to viral quote-tweets. For instance, on that same day, X^[14] user @lunch_enjoyer joked in a quote-tweet, "I went to high school with Tilly Norwood and she said the n-word all the time," gaining over 49,000 likes in a few hours.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References