Film & TV3 min(s) read
Published 12:23 07 Jul 2026 GMT
The unsettling truth about this actor's first movie role could spell trouble for Hollywood.
The rising newcomer is set to star in Misaligned, a comedy-drama and coming-of-age story set in a surreal digital world.
The film will be produced using a hybrid model, with directors, writers, and editors working alongside AI specialists, while traditional crew members will receive AI training and mentorship throughout production.
According to Variety, the movie is set inside the "Tillyverse," which is a "surreal digital world located somewhere up in the cloud".
It will follow the main character, Tilly, an "AI being with no real body, no childhood, and no lived experience of her own, but access to everyone else’s".
"Things spiral when a seductive rogue bot from the dark web convinces her to abandon her guardrails and begin developing desires, impulses, and ambitions, making her more human," the outlet added.
There's just one catch with the upcoming movie: the actress isn't human.
The role will mark the feature film debut of Tilly Norwood, an AI-generated performer created by UK-based company Particle 6.
The company, which was founded in 2015 by Eline van der Velden, says Misaligned has been designed as a collaboration between traditional filmmakers and AI specialists, rather than a replacement for human creativity.
The company says it has retrained and upskilled its team of more than 30 people ahead of production.
"Our work this year has proven something we suspected all along," van der Velden said in a statement. "AI can support premium narrative filmmaking, but only with substantial amounts of human craft, skill, judgement, and time."
"That’s not a limitation of the technology. That’s the point. The filmmakers who thrive in the next decade will be the ones who bring decades of storytelling instinct to these new tools, and Misaligned is where we put that to work at feature scale," she added.
Norwood's debut is expected to revive a debate that has been simmering since Particle 6 first unveiled the AI performer last year.
Last September, SAG-AFTRA released a scathing statement, stating that they did not consider Norwood to be an actor.
"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," they said.
"It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion, and, from what we’ve seen, audiences aren’t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience. 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."
"Additionally, signatory producers should be aware that they may not use synthetic performers without complying with our contractual obligations, which require notice and bargaining whenever a synthetic performer is going to be used," they added.
Despite the backlash, van der Velden believes AI performers will complement, rather than replace, traditional actors.
"We're still going to want to watch Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds," she said. "We're still going to want to watch any level of actor. Instead of AI actors being in real film and TV, I think what might happen is that you'll get real actors wanting to be in the AI genre. We might do digital twins of them, so that they can also be an AI genre and get money from being in a different genre."
Van der Velden argued that, with the right direction, AI technology can achieve the same level of performance as animated characters.
"You can direct these computer-generated characters in a certain way, just like you can, in animation, direct Elsa [in Frozen]," she added.
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