Comedic actor and producer Eline Van der Velden, better known as the creator of the AI-generated “actor” Tilly Norwood, insists the robot-actor is a job creator, not the job killer critics fear she will be.
Norwood, who was introduced to the world in July 2025, is back in the spotlight as she — or it — is poised to make her big-screen debut in “Misaligned,” a feature film from Particle6, Van der Velden’s production company.
Rather than destroying jobs, Norwood has allowed her to hire more staff, Van der Velden told CBS News. Since she leaned into AI, her studio has expanded her small team sixfold by hiring actors, creative producers and writers, pushing her employee base to roughly 40 workers, she added.
“It’s all a result of AI being available,” Van der Velden said.
Van der Velden is keenly aware of the perils of AI and the threat it poses to workers’ livelihoods, including her own. As an actor and producer, she was concerned that AI could quickly render some of her creative skills, including acting and video content creation, obsolete if she didn’t learn how to leverage it.
“I was in the same boat as everyone else. I saw AI-generated images and videos and was like, wow, this is going to take my business,” she said. “I was an actor running a small production company, and I knew I needed to future-proof my company and myself.”
“Stay in her AI box”
Van der Velden told CBS News that while she’s received offers for Norwood to appear in traditional films, she has declined them because she “would never place Tilly in a role that’s in a live-action film.”
Those jobs should be going to human actors, she added.
“The point of her is to raise awareness of what is possible, but she needs to stay in her AI box. That’s why we are making an AI film with her,” Van der Velden said.
Particle6 describes Norwood’s first feature film, titled “Misaligned,” as a “coming-of-age story infused with existential AI chaos” that is set in “a surreal digital world located somewhere up in the Cloud.” Norwood will play an AI being with no lived experience of her own who gains access to humans’ backstories. She will appear alongside other AI-generated actors, according to Van der Velden, who said the film is in production.
Norwood’s critics
Norwood sparked an immediate backlash when she was introduced to the world in July 2025.
“To be clear, ‘Tilly Norwood’ is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation,” Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) said in a statement in September 2025.
“It doesn’t solve any ‘problem’ — it creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry,” the statement added.
Clearly, Van der Velden has struck a nerve, perhaps because she’s given a name — and a face — to the growing employment fears that professionals across most industries are experiencing as AI gains traction in the workplace.
Van der Velden says the backlash against Norwood is unwarranted and that she won’t be competing with traditional actors for roles.
“It’s just uninformed, because you would never be auditioning against a bot. That’s like saying you’d be auditioning against Elsa from ‘Frozen,'” Van der Velden said, making reference to the animated Disney character.
Prior to creating Norwood, Van der Velden was best known for playing a character she created called Miss Holland, a Dutch native with little understanding of British customs who comically tries to assimilate. Van der Velden compared dressing up and acting like Miss Holland to directing Norwood to look, sound or act a particular way.
“It’s no different from me dressing up, putting on a wig, getting freckles and losing weight. It’s what we do as actors,” Van der Velden said.
Thousands of iterations
Van der Velden first turned to ChatGPT to start brainstorming Norwood’s image.
The first prompt she gave the AI program was to create an AI actress capable of becoming a global superstar. “She wants to achieve her goal of becoming a mega powerful, AI actress,” Van der Velden recalled.
Van der Velden brainstormed Norwood’s appearances with numerous publicly available AI tools. The first images she saw were “way too perfect, which was boring.”
Van der Velden said she didn’t rely on existing brands or images to create Norwood’s look. “The whole point is we wanted to create something original, so you wouldn’t want the AI to be pulling on the specific look of someone,” she said.
Creating the final look for Norwood took four months and about 2,000 iterations, Van der Velden said.
Particle6 now can age Norwood up or down, allowing her to play different roles. Van der Velden can creatively direct or prompt Norwood, and even personally drive a performance.
Soon, Tilly will have an “interactive” mode in which she is more autonomous.
“We’ve built her brain, so we’ve creatively thought about how she thinks, what she speaks like and says – and she is autonomous in her speaking. It is different from her acting,” Van der Velden said.
