Remember that fake AI actress Tilly Norwood? The one that sparked a Hollywood backlash? Well, one actor is taking a stand against her, albeit a funny one: Ryan Reynolds. The Deadpool actor announced his company Mint Mobile’s first foray into providing Wifi, and he found a real-life actress named Tilly Norwood to help him out.
Tilly Norwood (the fake one) is a viral AI-generated creation pushed as the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman. It was created by Eline Van der Velden, the Dutch founder of AI company Particle 6 Productions. Van der Velden sparked a backlash after announcing new talent studio Xicoia, which Deadline reported was already in talks with a number of talent agents interested in signing Tilly Norwood.
The Hollywood community was quick to condemn Tilly Norwood and its creators, as well as warn producers against dealing with it. Scream’s Melissa Barrera wrote: "Hope all actors repped by the agent that does this, drop their a$. How gross, read the room.” Matilda’s Mara Wilson said: "Shame on these people. They have stolen the faces of hundreds of young women to make this AI ‘actress.’ They’re not creators. They’re identity thieves."
The Fantastic Four’s Ralph Ineson, who played Galactus in the MCU movie, was more direct, posting “F*** off” on X / Twitter.
Now, in his new advertisement, Reynolds introduces MINTernet, a low-cost option for home internet via the Mint Mobile network, which is powered by T-Mobile. Next to him stood Natalie “Tilly” Norwood.
“Everything about Mint Mobile seems unreal. And now, we’re introducing 5G home internet for $30 a month. Yes, that’s real,” Reynolds said in the ad. “That’s why we invited Tilly Norwood, a real Mint customer, to help us announce it.”
Reynolds then asked the actress, “You are real, right?” After she answered in the affirmative, the actor double-checked. “Not an AI-generated combination of actors?” Norwood cheekily responded: “I’m a combination of my parents.”
At the end of the ad, a voiceover went on to mention that the new Mint Mobile internet deal is only available to “carbon-based organisms." AI need not apply. What do they need internet for anyway? Actually, don’t answer that.
With this ad, Reynolds is putting his company, one of his key moneymakers aside from his entertainment career, on the line to express a very clear stance against AI. That said, Reynolds isn’t the first actor to speak out against the Tilly Norwood controversy. GLOW alum Betty Gilpin recently penned an open letter to the AI actress that was published in The Hollywood Reporter, in which she tried her hardest to relate to the computer-generated performer but hilariously kept coming up short because Gilpin is, unlike Tilly, human. SAG-AFTRA, the union for actors on film and television, also came out and condemned the AI creation.
Creator Van der Velden addressed the backlash to insist Tilly Norwood “is not a replacement for a human being.”
“To those who have expressed anger over the creation of my AI character, Tilly Norwood: she is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work — a piece of art,” Van der Velden said in a post released on the Tilly Norwood social media pages. “Like many forms of art before her, she sparks conversation, and that in itself shows the power of creativity.
“I see AI not as a replacement for people, but as a new tool, a new paintbrush. Just as animation, puppetry, or CGI opened fresh possibilities without taking away from live acting, AI offers another way to imagine and build stories. I’m an actor myself, and nothing — certainly not an AI character — can take away the craft or joy of human performance.
"Creating Tilly has been, for me, an act of imagination and craftmanship, not unlike drawing a character, writing a role or shaping a performance. It takes time, skill, and iteration to bring such a character to life. She represents experimentation, not substitution. Much of my work has always been about holding up a mirror to society through satire, and this is no different."
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
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