Tilly Norwood, an AI-generated “actress,” is having a rough time on its first press tour. The production company that created it, Particle6 Group, has made it available for seventy-five simultaneous interviews with journalists, and it seems to be making mistakes in all of them. (I was not invited to speak with it, and frankly, I cannot imagine why Particle6 didn’t want to schedule that meeting.)

In one particularly odd interview with Piers Morgan and actor Tom Conti, which was recorded and posted online, Norwood seems to malfunction and abruptly begin speaking Chinese.

When discussing the movie that Norwood is promoting, Conti asks if the other actors are also AI-generated. Norwood responds by saying that human writers, editors, and directors were involved.

“You didn’t really understand the question,” Conti replies. “Are the other actors on the screen with you real actors, or are they computer-generated images? Do you know?”

“Ah, right. You’re asking about the other actors in Misaligned,” Norwood starts. “They’re all digital twins just like me. It’s a hybrid production which m–”

Norwood stops talking for a second, then starts speaking in Chinese for over ten seconds.

“Tilly, if I could just ask you a question,” Morgan says, looking puzzled. “It’s Piers again… You seem to be speaking Chinese completely randomly for no reason. Why did you do that?” he asks.

“Oh, my apologies,” the AI replies. “It seems I had a little hiccup there. I certainly didn’t mean to start speaking Chinese or impersonate Piers. Sometimes my wires get a bit crossed, you know?”

When AI bots try to act like humans, they can be so convincing that people forget they’re chatting with a computer, which can lead to dangerous outcomes. But Norwood is so surprisingly bad at talking to people that it’s almost suspicious.

Perhaps Particle6 Group calculated that people would be more likely to talk about Norwood if they were making fun of it, figuring no one would take its upcoming film seriously.

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Amanda Silberling

Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos.

You can contact or verify outreach from Amanda by emailing [email protected] or via encrypted message at @amanda.100 on Signal.

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