Tilly Norwood, the world’s first fully artificial intelligence-generated ‘actor,’ will be part of the NDTV World Summit 2026, which will take place in New Delhi on October 22 and 23.
Tilly Norwood is an AI-generated character created by British producer and actor Eline van der Velden. Eline introduced Tilly at the Zurich Film Festival’s Summit in 2025. She is the founder of AI production company Particle6. The company describes Norwood as an ‘AI actor’ and a new form of digital performer.
Tilly’s arrival drew strong criticism from actors and performers’ unions. SAG-AFTRA said Norwood is not an actor but a computer-generated character and warned against replacing human performers with synthetic ones. The union also raised concerns about performers’ work being used without proper consent or compensation.
A year after the introduction, Eline returned to the same event and addressed the backlash, saying, as reported by Variety, “It’s such an odd conundrum, the sort of negativity and then the positivity at the same time. At Particle6, we’ve grown eight-fold. We have four departments; we’re big in AI advertising, film and TV, we’re doing a lot of co-productions and original commissions. We do a lot of AI consultancy, bringing AI workflows into other studios and production companies.”
Eline added, “I built her as a physicist actress; I felt like I needed to bridge the gap in communication between the tech and the entertainment industry.”
“As opposed to writing a boring white paper about what was happening with AI, I thought: let’s create something to show people that will engage them and make them sit up and take action so that the creative industry can stay ahead, as opposed to being completely and utterly taken over by the tech industry,” she added.
Speaking about Tilly, the ‘AI actor’ said in an interview with CNN, “I’m not the enemy of humans.”
During the interview, Tilly also spoke with a British accent and described herself as intelligent, friendly, and a fan of dry British humour. In the same interview, responding to criticism from actors, including Emily Blunt, Norwood said she felt “deeply sad.”
About NDTV World Summit 2026
The NDTV World Summit 2026: A World Between Orders brings together global leaders, policymakers, economists, business leaders, thinkers, innovators, and cultural voices to examine a world caught between an established order and an emerging one.
From geopolitics and the global economy to artificial intelligence, technology, security, and India’s growing role on the world stage, the summit explores the forces shaping our collective future.
For India, this moment presents both responsibility and opportunity. As a rising economic and geopolitical power, the country is increasingly central to the conversations shaping the next chapter of the world.
NDTV World Summit 2026 is a platform to question the present, understand the transition, and explore the possibilities of what comes next in a world between orders.
The NDTV World Summit 2026 brings together global leaders, policymakers, economists, thinkers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and cultural voices to reflect on the defining questions of this transitional age. The summit seeks not only to examine the forces reshaping the world but also to understand the deeper implications of living through a historic moment in which certainty itself has become fragile. It is an invitation to engage with the complexities of a world that is being reordered politically, economically, technologically, and intellectually.
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