内容来源：https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/791680/tilly-norwood-particle6-xicoia-eline-van-der-velden

内容总结：

上周在苏黎世电影节上，人工智能制作公司Particle6及其旗下虚拟人才工作室Xicoia的创始人埃琳·范德费尔登透露，多家艺人经纪公司对该公司开发的AI虚拟演员"蒂莉·诺伍德"表现出合作兴趣。尽管未透露具体机构名称，这一表态已引发好莱坞行业媒体的广泛讨论。

这款数字虚拟人被塑造为拥有明星潜质的形象，其团队甚至宣称要将其培养成"下一个斯嘉丽·约翰逊"。但目前该形象仅出现在制作公司的概念宣传片中，实际表演能力与宣传声势存在明显落差。业内人士指出，所谓"AI演员"实质是通过算法模拟人类表演的数字木偶，其言行完全受控于开发团队。

值得关注的是，美国演员工会（SAG-AFTRA）已对此发出警告，强调此类技术非但未能解决行业现存问题，反而可能通过盗用表演数据威胁演员就业，贬损人类表演艺术的价值。随着意大利制片人近日宣布开发"AI导演"的消息，人工智能对创意产业的冲击正引发更深入的行业反思。

中文翻译：

上周在苏黎世电影节上，人工智能制片公司Particle6及其旗下艺人工作室Xicoia的创始人兼首席执行官艾琳·范德费尔登透露，已有数家经纪公司对与AI生成的"女演员"蒂莉·诺伍德合作表现出兴趣。虽然范德费尔登未具体说明哪些经纪公司正在考虑将诺伍德（以及其背后的Xicoia）纳入客户名单，但仅"经纪公司主动接洽"这一表态，就足以让娱乐行业媒体争相报道诺伍德的诞生过程。

蒂莉·诺伍德实为生成式AI的心理战术
这个数字形象的推出犹如一场哗众取宠的噱头，旨在让生成式AI渗入好莱坞的过程显得理所当然。

作为Xicoia正在打造的众多逼真数字形象中的首个作品，范德费尔登宣称希望"蒂莉能成为下一个斯嘉丽·约翰逊或娜塔莉·波特曼"。但迄今为止，这个角色最重要的"表演"仅出现在Particle6恶搞电视剧制作流程的《AI专员》视频中。与众多生成式AI初创公司创始人如出一辙，范德费尔登谈及蒂莉·诺伍德演艺潜力的自信姿态，与实际展示效果形成鲜明反差。这场造势活动多数时候像场轻易就会被忽略的闹剧，但正是此类博眼球的伎俩，正在让"AI演员"这种荒诞概念潜移默化地深入人心。

将蒂莉·诺伍德称为演员实属概念偷换，只要了解Xicoia的技术本质便不言自明。她并非能独立思考、行动和决策的真实女性，而是通过真人影像训练的AI模型生成动作与语音的动画形象。据《截止日》报道，Xicoia试图让蒂莉在网络互动中"进行即兴对话、表演独白、实时响应热点，并根据平台受众调整语气与表达"。虽然部分回应可实现自动化，但这个数字形象仍需"人工创意监督"才能正常运作。

本质上，蒂莉·诺伍德不过是个受Xicoia操控的数字木偶，而这恰是该公司着力宣扬的卖点。在《AI专员》中，某个猥琐男性虚拟角色直言爱上蒂莉的理由是"她对我百依百顺"，这似乎暴露了Xicoia试图迎合某些观众的特殊癖好。整段视频不仅令人不适，更揭示了该公司对蒂莉用途的真实设想。

曾身为演员和喜剧人的范德费尔登理应明白，表演艺术远不止背台词、走位和换装。她也不可能不清楚，若非Xicoia内部制作，将蒂莉植入影视剧集会面临诸多技术障碍。但无论其是否真心相信自家产品能取代真人演员，通过让"蒂莉·诺伍德"这个名字占领大众心智，她已在潜移默化中植入这种可能性。

这种营销策略与AI鼓吹者惯用的末日论调如出一辙。虽然听任AI开发者危言耸听自己技术的破坏性显得荒诞，但若将其视为另类广告便说得通了。这种话术旨在让公众相信生成式AI的全面降临是必然趋势，而非人为选择的结果。这种预设的"必然性"企图让人们更易接受并投身于生成式AI的狂欢——即便实际技术远未达到宣传效果。

蒂莉·诺伍德或许永远成不了Xicoia期望的巨星，但就在这个数字形象登上头条几天后，意大利制片人安德里亚·耶尔沃洛宣布正在开发能"颂扬欧洲伟大电影诗性语言"的AI导演。这一切荒唐景象恰是其本质写照，但更深层的目的是让公众逐渐适应光怪陆离的现状，最终对这类产品——无论是电影、剧集还是短视频——报以"有何不可"的漠然。

即便尚无经纪公司真正叩响Xicoia的大门，该公司仍试图通过舆论塑造既成事实。其向《综艺》宣称"人人都想采访蒂莉"，若这个虚拟形象真能获得艺人合约，必将向娱乐产业传递危险信号：在某些人眼中，数字构造物已能胜任传统由人类承担的工作。

耐人寻味的是，蒂莉·诺伍德甚至算不上行业首创。网络早已充斥AI生成的棕发女郎影像，史克威尔艾尼克斯当年力推的"虚拟演员"艾琪·罗斯（由温明娜配音）仍令人记忆犹新。关键区别在于，Xicoia与所有生成式AI厂商一样，正不顾业内抗议强行刷存在感。美国演员工会一针见血地指出：蒂莉·诺伍德"没有解决任何问题，反而制造了新问题——通过盗用表演数据取代演员工作，危及从业者生计，贬损人类艺术价值"。

与虚无缥缈的蒂莉·诺伍德不同，演员工会提出的忧虑真切而紧迫，更值得我们高度关注。

英文来源：

Last week at the Zurich Film Festival, Eline Van der Velden — founder and CEO of AI production house Particle6 and its subsidiary talent studio Xicoia — said that a number of talent agents had expressed interest in working with Tilly Norwood, an AI-generated “actress” created by the companies. Van der Velden has not gone into detail about which agencies might be contemplating whether they should bring Norwood (and by extension, Xicoia) on as clients. But simply saying that agents have come knocking was enough to get the entertainment industry trades buzzing and posting stories about how Norwood came to be.
Tilly Norwood is a gen AI psyop
The digital avatar’s rollout feels like a stunt meant to normalize gen AI’s creep into Hollywood.
Tilly Norwood is a gen AI psyop
The digital avatar’s rollout feels like a stunt meant to normalize gen AI’s creep into Hollywood.
Norwood is the first of many lifelike digital avatars being cooked up at Xicoia, and Van der Velden has said that she wants “Tilly to be the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman.” So far, the character’s biggest “role” has been in Particle6’s “AI Commissioner” video parodying the TV production process. Like many gen AI startup founders, Van der Velden speaks about Tilly Norwood’s potential acting career with a confidence that doesn’t really seem warranted when you actually see what the avatar is doing. A lot of Tilly Norwood’s rollout feels like a stunt that could easily be ignored. But buzz-generating stunts like this can also lead to nonsensical ideas like “AI actors” becoming normalized in people’s minds.
There is an intellectual dishonesty to calling Tilly Norwood an actress that becomes abundantly clear when you understand what Xicoia has been developing. Tilly Norwood is not a real woman who can think, act, or make decisions independently — it is an animated avatar whose movements and speech are generated by an AI model trained on footage of actual people. Deadline reports that Xicoia wants to give people ways to interact with Tilly online where the avatar could “engage in unscripted conversations, perform monologues, respond to trends in real time and adapt tone and references to suit platform-specific audiences.” Some of Tilly’s responses will be automated, but the avatar also requires “human creative oversight” in order to function properly.
In essence, Tilly Norwood is a digital puppet that can be made to do whatever the folks at Xicoia want it to, and that seems to be a marketing point the company wants to stress. At one point in “AI Commissioner,” a skeezy male avatar says that it is in love with Tilly because “she’ll do anything I say,” which makes it seem like Xicoia is trying to appeal to an audience keen on seeing these characters doing things other than “acting.” The whole video is creepy, but also telling in terms of what Xicoia thinks Tilly can be used for.
Van der Velden — herself a former actor and comedian — probably knows that there is more to acting than reciting lines, hitting marks, and dressing up in costumes. She also likely understands that, unless the project was an in-house Xicoia production, inserting Tilly into a movie or series would pose a number of technical challenges. But regardless of whether Van der Velden actually believes that Xicoia’s gen AI creations can do what living performers can, she is seeding the idea that it’s possible by getting Tilly Norwood’s name into people’s mouths and minds.
This kind of marketing tactic is similar to the hyperbolic doomerism that AI boosters have used to hype up their products. As odd as it is to hear AI’s proponents gleefully sounding alarms about how destructive the technology they’re developing is, it makes much more sense when you think about those warnings as a kind of advertisement. It implies that everything about gen AI is inevitable rather than a result of the decisions people are making. And that implied inevitability is meant to make you more willing to accept and buy into the gen AI hype machine — even when the tech doesn’t really work the way it was promised.
Tilly Norwood may never make it big the way Xicoia wants, but just days after the avatar began making headlines, Italian producer Andrea Iervolino announced that he has been developing an AI director designed to “celebrate the poetic and dreamlike language of great European cinema.” All of this feels ridiculous because that’s exactly what it is. But the larger goal is to inure you to the strangeness of it all so that when these products — be they movies, shows, or TikToks — finally come to market, your reaction is “Sure, why not?”
Even if agents aren’t banging on Xicoia’s door in hopes of getting into the Tilly Norwood business, the company is trying to speak that outcome into reality. It recently told Variety that “everyone wants an interview with Tilly.” And if the avatar were to secure talent representation, it would send a message to the entertainment industry that some see digital constructs as being just as capable of doing jobs that have traditionally been done by living people.
What’s funny about the Tilly Norwood fuss is that the avatar isn’t even much of an industry first. The internet is filled with AI-generated images and footage of brunette women, and it is hard to forget Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within’s Aki Ross — a “virtual actress” (voiced by Ming-Na Wen) that Squaresoft tried to turn into a real-world celebrity. The big difference here is that Xicoia, like basically every gen AI outfit, is trying to brute force itself into relevance even as real people within the entertainment industry have cried foul. SAG-AFTRA hit the nail on the head when it said that Tilly Norwood “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.”
Unlike Tilly Norwood, SAG-AFTRA’s concerns are very, very real, and much more deserving of our attention.