What AI-generated Tilly Norwood reveals about digital culture, ethics and the responsibilities of creators; The Conversation, October 8, 2025

Ramona Pringle, Director, Creative Innovation Studio; Associate Professor, RTA School of Media, Toronto Metropolitan University , The Conversation; What AI-generated Tilly Norwood reveals about digital culture, ethics and the responsibilities of creators

"Imagine an actor who never ages, never walks off set or demands a higher salary.

That’s the promise behind Tilly Norwood, a fully AI-generated “actress” currently being courted by Hollywood’s top talent agencies. Her synthetic presence has ignited a media firestorm, denounced as an existential threat to human performers by some and hailed as a breakthrough in digital creativity by others.

But beneath the headlines lies a deeper tension. The binaries used to debate Norwood — human versus machine, threat versus opportunity, good versus bad — flatten complex questions of art, justice and creative power into soundbites. 

The question isn’t whether the future will be synthetic; it already is. Our challenge now is to ensure that it is also meaningfully human."