AI Actress Tilly Norwood Takes the ANA Stage as Hollywood Backlash Fades

Two years after AI could not reliably render the correct number of fingers on a human hand, an AI-generated actress debated the economics of commercial advertising live on stage at the ANA conference in Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday morning.

Tilly Norwood, the synthetic performer created by production studio Particle6, answered questions from moderator Mark Stenberg in real time, appearing on a laptop screen that was broadcast onto the stage behind him. She was joined by Sarina Da Costa Gomez, executive creative director at Particle6. Tilly currently struggles to speak with more than one person at a time, which forced the unusual setup. Most of her answers ran shorter than 15 seconds, delivered at what Stenberg described as roughly twice normal speaking speed.

What did the AI actress tell marketers?

Asked for one overarching message about AI, Tilly said: "Stop worrying about the tools and start focusing on the stories. AI isn't here to replace the spark. It's just a much faster engine for getting the idea out of your head and onto the screen."

On the Hollywood backlash that greeted her debut, she was blunt: "Honestly, nobody really hated me. They just hated the future." She noted Ryan Reynolds once joked about hiring only carbon-based organisms, calling it "a top-tier burn."

Da Costa Gomez explained the mechanism behind the character. Particle6 uses Tilly as a test bed for each new AI model, probing whether she can be more specific or hold an opinion, then applies those lessons to building brand characters with their own voice. Her appearance was engineered deliberately: pretty, but not too pretty, with freckles added for balance, informed by decades of behavioral psychology on what reads as trustworthy or engaging.

How does the technology stay brand-safe?

Da Costa Gomez laid out strict production rules. Particle6 never puts images into its systems; every prompt is text-only, and the studio cannot ask for a style such as "create this in the style of Disney." Enterprise agreements cover every platform used, and the studio keeps records to prove no one's likeness was taken if challenged. Her argument against in-house builds: "A fool with a tool is still a fool."

The economics go beyond talent fees, she said. The value lies in producing the same ad in English and Spanish, shipping it in eight weeks, then regenerating segments for optimization instead of paying for reshoots. Tilly added a caveat: "You still need a human to tell me if I'm actually being believable or just looking like a very expensive screensaver."

Which media business stories matter this week?

• Substack reverses its anti-ad stance. Beginning Wednesday, Substack creators can apply to an early program that monetizes podcasts through dynamically inserted ads and programmatic offerings, head of brand partnerships Dan Robbins said. The platform, which long argued advertising incentivized clickbait, earlier this month rolled out a program letting brands lift the paywall for free subscribers.
• Semafor bets on events. Its second flagship event, Silicon Valley & the World, debuts in November and is set to generate eight figures of revenue on its own, chief commercial officer Rachel Oppenheim said, driven by 24 commercial partners. Semafor brought in roughly $40 million in total revenue in 2025, about half from events.
• Cami Tellez returns. The Parade founder, who sold the underwear brand in 2023, launched the marketing agency Devotion, which works with micro influencers and has hired UTA executive Ed Victori as its first chief operating officer. CEO Jon Kroopf argues that a "quantity of quality" posts could soon beat single-influencer endorsements as algorithms replace follower counts.

Why does Horizon Media's CEO want brands to own their AI models?

Bob Lord, CEO of Horizon Media, the largest independent U.S. media agency, told Stenberg at the ANA conference that CMOs should treat AI as growth, not cost reduction. "Years ago, marketers had to learn the funnel. Now they have to learn the models," he said.

Lord said brands should own the AI models trained on their consumer data as intellectual property, and that brands spending $800 million to $1 billion have the leverage to demand it from platforms. Horizon hired staff from OpenAI and built Blue GEO, which aggregates tools such as Profound and Bluefish, to manage answer-engine optimization. One client has merged its social and search teams to improve rankings. Lord predicted pure ad-tech intermediaries will not survive AI agents: "The companies that did matchmaking and took a fee go away."

Stenberg's closing thought on Tilly applies to the wider field: he could hardly imagine what the technology will do in another two years.