Expert breaks down Tilly Norwood, AI and Copyright Wars

Tilly Norwood looks like a star. She smiles on a red carpet, tears up on cue, slays enemies like Jennifer Lawrence, and posts behind-the-scenes clips. But Tilly isn’t a person. She’s the first “AI actress”, and she’s creating shockwaves around the world, opening up debate about the copyright implications of AI.

Tilly was trained on actors’ performances without their permission

Tilly Norwood is the brainchild of Dutch actor-turned producer-turned technologist Eline van der Velden. Tilly came to ‘life’ through Eline’s production company Particle6 Productions Ltd and its newly launched AI talent division called Xicoia.

The reaction was immediate and blistering: SAG-AFTRA condemned Tilly as a synthetic character trained on actors’ performances without permission or compensation.

The venture’s own site leans in: “imagery, videos, voice, personality, and likeness of Tilly Norwood” are described as intellectual property managed by Particle6, positioning Tilly less as a performer and more as a proprietary entertainment asset like Labubus or Anime characters.

But this framing raises a foundational question: who owns “Tilly” and what exactly is the protectable right? Is it the code, the visual outputs, the brand, some composite of all three? The company’s terms imply Particle6 ownership of the persona and outputs, though the site’s language is self-asserted and untested in court.

Fear AI will ‘appropriate’ human craft 

Union leadership and rank-and-file actors say Tilly’s debut crystallises the fear that AI will appropriate the “inputs” of human craft. Their faces, voices, gestures, expressions, and turn them into endlessly re-usable, licensable “talent” with no residuals or labour rights.

SAG-AFTRA called for human-centered creativity and reminded producers of bargaining obligations where “synthetics” are used. The union’s critique echoes the unresolved AI flashpoints from its 2023–24 negotiations.

Eline van der Velden counters that AI is simply another tool similar to CGI or animation used by human creators to tell stories. In the studio’s telling, Tilly is a designed character with a backstory and “emotionally intelligent” persona, not a 1:1 clone of any particular artist. Still, industry analysts note that star power is a human business built on lived experience, publicity ecosystems, and fan relationships; a purely synthetic “celebrity” may struggle to gain cultural traction beyond a stunt.

IP and Tilly’s ‘ownership’

From an IP perspective, the rights matrix around Tilly looks something like this:

1. Copyright in the building blocks: The training data may have come from copyrighted works. If any of that material was used without license, the legality depends on jurisdiction and exceptions. (More on Australia’s live debate below.) Even when training is lawful, outputs that are “substantially similar” to protected works can trigger infringement risk.
2. Copyright in the language model ‘weights’: The software model (weights, code) may be protectable as well.
3. Individual outputs are protectable: If they embody sufficient human authorship. In some jurisdictions, even machine-generated works can have copyright. Jurisdictions that require human authorship, human direction and involvement must be meaningful in its editing and curation if protection is to be plausible.
4. Trade mark and passing off: “Tilly Norwood” could be secured as a brand name and logo for entertainment services, insulating against impostors and merch parasites. It has already been registered as a trade mark in the UK.

This article was first published on November 25, 2025 by SecurityBrief, a leading news service focused on cybersecurity and cyberattack news, at https://securitybrief.com.au/story/expert-breaks-down-tilly-norwood-ai-and-copyright-wars

Contact: Aparna Watal (Aparna.Watal@halfords.com.au)

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