Emily Blunt Sounds Alarm: AI Actor Tilly Norwood Is Terrifying — We're Screwed

AI just got itself an agent bait. Emily Blunt found out mid-interview that a fully AI-generated actress is making the rounds in Hollywood, and her reaction was basically: this is not great.

Wait, who is Tilly Norwood?

Tilly Norwood is a digital performer built by Xicoia, a new AI talent venture started by Eline Van der Velden. The company unveiled its first creation at the Zurich Summit during the Zurich Film Festival, and yes, there are already agents sniffing around. The pitch is bold too: Tilly was described to Blunt as being modeled to be the next Scarlett Johansson. Blunt had the obvious response: but we already have Scarlett Johansson.

Blunt hears about it in real time

On Variety's Awards Circuit Podcast, Blunt was blindsided when the host brought up Tilly and showed her an image. She could not hide the shock. She called the whole thing terrifying, said she was not sure how to even answer the question, and then went straight to the part that matters to actors: the fear of losing the human connection.

"No, are you serious? That’s an AI? Good Lord, we’re screwed. That is really, really scary."

She then pleaded with agencies not to swap out real performers for synthetic ones: please stop taking away our human connection.

The backlash kicked in fast

As soon as Tilly was announced, actors started pushing back, both on the ethics and the optics of a studio-made composite face being sold as the next big thing. Inside baseball alert: the fact that agents are courting an AI character is exactly the kind of thing that sets off labor alarms in an industry that just spent a year negotiating AI guardrails.

• Melissa Barrera on Instagram (via Dexerto): "Hope all actors repped by the agent that does this, drop their a$$. How gross, read the room."
• Mara Wilson questioned the source material: "What about the hundreds of living young women whose faces were composited together to make her? You couldn’t hire any of them?"
• Kiersy Clemons also voiced objections.

What Xicoia is saying

Van der Velden says Tilly is just the start. Multiple studios are developing similar AI talent projects, and more announcements are coming in the months ahead. Translation: this is not a one-off experiment. Whether the industry embraces digital actors or rallies hard against them is now the question, and Blunt made her vote crystal clear.