Tilly Norwood

An AI production shop rolled out Tilly Norwood this week, a synthetic actress. Here’s a fun sizzle reel if you want to see for yourself.

She’s nowhere near perfect. But she’s real enough to cast, to scale, to replace. That’s the real that matters; the rest, as they say, we’ll fix in post.

Hollywood (well, social-media Hollywood) is Not Doing Well. Some voices this week weren’t worried about craft or future-proofing; they were calling for naming and shaming any agent who signs her.

Remember #MeToo? I guess everyone’s an ally until the mortar round lands a little too close to your foxhole.

Tilly and her ilk are going to win.

We love to elevate the idea of our highest creativity, but 20 years of social media show that amateur-hour slop beats substance a thousand times a day before breakfast.

This isn’t because slop is better. But choice feels better. The endless buffet beats perfect curation. Choice is agency, and agency is (or feels like) power. Even if the outcomes are garbage.

Journalism knows this story. What tech and socials—and now AI—did to that field wasn’t malicious, just indifferent. Ink-stained wretch or thespian, the story rhymes.

I don’t know how quickly AI is improving. But I know this: There are things I can do with it now that I couldn’t six months ago. Or even last week.

And that’s the thing to sit with.

A lot of us are arranging inventory in our buggy-whip shops as the first Model A clambers into town. It’s loud. It breaks down. It’s not as reliable as a horse.

And yet...

Greg W. Brooks. First published on Facebook, Sept. 29, 2025.