AI-Generated Movie Star Has a Total Meltdown on TV

Can we give a special Oscar this year for the worst performance by an actress? If so, Tilly Norwood earned it on Friday evening.

Tilly is no ordinary Hollywood celebrity. She is the first AI-generated movie star—introduced to the world in July 2025 with tremendous fanfare. According to an inside source, almost every big player in Hollywood expressed interest in hiring her.

Over the course of a few weeks, Tilly’s representative “signed about 60 nondisclosure agreements for hybrid movies (with real actors), full AI films and Tilly-specific projects, most of them in the $10 million to $50 million range.”

No movie star in history had ever pursued so many deals all at once. Not Garbo or Gable. Not Bogart or Brando. Not De Niro or DiCaprio. Only Tilly Norwood.

And Norwood was just the opening gambit in a far more ambitious plan. The company behind Tilly announced that it was developing twenty more AI movie stars. Hollywood execs were salivating at the prospect of making movies without pesky cast members and their incessant demands.

But all that is looking less likely after Tilly’s high-profile interview with TV host Piers Morgan on Friday. Tilly got flustered by a simple question, and looked hopelessly confused—then she started speaking in Chinese.

Watch for yourself and see.

(Passing comment: I guess all those stories about are true.)

Has there ever been a worse movie star interview in history? Tilly’s meltdown was far more embarrassing than Joaquin Phoenix mumbling incoherently on David Letterman’s show, or Tom Cruise jumping up on Oprah’s couch. At least they weren’t mouthing talking points from Beijing during the conversation.

This disastrous interview was part of an ambitious media campaign on Tilly’s behalf—during which she gave 75 simultaneous interviews. But she “seems to be making mistakes in all of them,” according to industry commentator Amanda Siberling.

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In an especially bizarre twist, Tilly’s owner made her available to everybody (even you and me) via video calls—but after the first two minutes you need to pay $14 to keep her talking. I’ll let you imagine what those calls are like.

Frankly, I don’t think Tilly can talk her way out of this mess. The more she speaks, the more PR blunders she makes.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Tilly has fared poorly with audiences. A few months ago, she appeared in her debut music video—and it got widely mocked.

Here are some of the comments from YouTube.

• “This song makes Rebecca Black’s “Friday” look like a masterpiece.”
• “This was the first dance song at my wedding. Everyone cried.”
• “At least Skynet was honest about trying to erase humanity.”
• “Weird that it keeps saying it’s human when it is literally not human.”
• “RIP to the thousands of gallons of water used to make the worst song of all time.”

And now Tilly’s first movie—aptly entitled Misaligned—will soon show up in movie theaters. But there has been no teaser or trailer, and we don’t even know the release date.

But I can safely predict that this film will be a fiasco. Tilly Norwood will never be a box office success—even if all sixty of those film deals get signed, sealed, and delivered.

The audience does not want AI-generated movie stars. They find Tilly creepy. They will launch protests and boycotts. She will achieve even less lasting renown than Hawk Tuah, Harambe, and the Harlem Shake.

I have been a reliable guide to you on this matter.

More than three years ago, I predicted that Hollywood studios would fail in their attempt to replace humans with bots. A few months later, others were shocked when the audience at SXSW actually started booing when AI was mentioned, but this merely confirmed what I’d learned from my own informal polls.

We got further confirmation, earlier this year, when AMC had to pull an AI film from its theaters after moviegoers threatened a boycott. They didn’t see it come, but The Honest Broker did.

I warned of the AI and data center backlash long before it ramped up, and anticipated that it would turn into a major election issue this year. I called the top on Meta’s stock—almost to the very day. In August, I anticipated that AI insiders would begin openly criticizing their own companies, and that has been validated in the most extreme way during the last two weeks. Various other predictions offered here (usually for premium subscribers—) have also proven true.

And now Tilly is getting a taste of this same backlash. My advice to her overseers is to cut their losses now—because things will only get worse if they continue to force-feed AI slop on an unwilling public.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a place for AI in Hollywood. But it has to serve as a tool for human creators—not their replacement. I can even envision indie filmmakers on a tight budget using this technology to launch their careers. But all this must happen in the larger context of a film industry that nurtures and supports human creativity.

If Hollywood execs haven’t figured that out yet, they soon will. Maybe Tilly Norwood will play a role in educating them. If so, it will probably be the only major role she ever plays.