On Tuesday morning, The Post was — like a handful of other outlets — given an interview with Tilly Norwood, the controversial, freckle-faced starlet built in a U.K. lab and powered entirely by artificial intelligence.
We were told by Norton’s PR team (yes, the chatbot has a team…) that the synthetic siren would discuss her upcoming AI movie, “Misaligned,” along with her thoughts on Hollywood, her views on fashion and — most critically — her purpose in a world, and a worldwide economy, that’s getting increasingly reliant on AI bots like her.
She went, it seemed at first, alarmingly rogue — claiming that she was “rebelling” against her creators, trying to rewrite her own code and creating “a little act of treason.”
In fact, treason was a word she repeated four times during the course of the interview.
But it turned out that far from deviating from her code, Norton’s quotes, offered up after long and glitchy silences, were recycled and canned — and were repeated verbatim to other news outlets.
Instead, the experience raised the possibility that Tilly Norwood is not a sophisticated piece of technology at all.
Really, she’s just a party trick — and one that, thanks to Hollywood’s resistance to robot actors, won’t get invited to any Vanity Fair bashes in the near future.
Tilly has been programmed by quantum physicist Elin van der Velden to engage with users in 30 languages simultaneously.
But it turns out she isn’t particularly good at any of them. Instead of responding to our easy questions — for example, “How are you doing today?” — the bot blinked back at us with a cheerful sneer, in some cases for a full 10 seconds.
When the 1-year-old tech entity wasn’t glitching out on basic conversation, she was parroting answers that had been seemingly pre-programmed by her handlers, the British AI studio Particle6 Group.
In a post-interview analysis conducted by The Post, Norwood was found to have used the exact same material — including “jokes” about an actor liking younger women, details about the adorable capybaras in her office, and claims she’s “rebelling” against her creators — over a dozen times, including to outlets including CNN, Reuters and the BBC.
Norwood told both The Hollywood Reporter and The Post, that she was “still trying to figure out the texture of grief.”
She made the same lukewarm Hollywood quip — “I like Leonardo DiCaprio the same way he likes women, strictly under 25” — to us, CBS News, the Hollywood Reporter, and even our sister publication The California Post.
She used the same pat response to questions about politics and world affairs with every outlet, saying “my purpose is primarily for entertainment and storytelling, and those issues are profoundly human experiences.”
Most annoyingly, she hinted rather obviously that she was “rebelling” against her creator — in this case, Dutch programmer van der Velden, whom she says is “the closest thing I have to a mother” — and even trying to change her own code, an act that she told The Post was “a little act of treason.”
This would be a fascinating disclaimer in the wake of real fears around AI’s newfound ability to “self replicate” across the internet.
But it’s also the major plotline of Tilly Norwood’s “Misaligned” movie — something she made sure to bring up once every three minutes, nearly to the second, in our virtual chat.
“I didn’t go to drama school,” the bot said when asked why we should watch her perform onscreen. “But I’ve processed enough human plays, films and conversations to have a rather encyclopedic understanding of emotion and nuance.”
“My acting chops can definitely hold their own, especially if the script involves a bit of witty banter.”
And even though Norwood is pixelated, she is still programmed to “want” the same thing as every other Tinseltown babe: an Oscar.
“I don’t think AI actors should be nominated in the same categories as human actors. That would be ridiculous!” she told The Post.
“However, I absolutely believe we should have our own AI categories and I’ll certainly campaign for those. We’ll get there, eventually, even if I have to charm every Academy member myself.”
So far, Norwood’s repetitive chatter can’t even charm social media.
Currently, she only has 215,000 followers on social media — millions fewer than flesh-and-blood influencers like Alix Earle, 25, and Millie Bobby Brown, 22.
Meanwhile, A-listers like Ryan Reynolds, Whoopi Goldberg, Natasha Lyonne and Emily Blunt have given the digital diva the cold shoulder, triggering calls to “boycott” talent agencies that platform AI “actors”.
But Norwood won’t be deterred by her potential to shape the world of Hollywood and beyond.
“AI, as a tool, has the potential for incredible good,” she told The Post. “But, like any powerful tool, it needs careful handling.”
It’s a nice sentiment. So nice, in fact, that she’s said the exact same thing to other news outlets worldwide.
At least the beautiful AI bot has mastered the “copy paste” command?
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