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For more than a century, cinema has evolved alongside technology. Sound transformed silent films, colour changed visual storytelling, computer-generated imagery expanded the limits of imagination, and streaming reshaped how audiences experience films. Each transformation brought uncertainty, but Artificial Intelligence represents a different kind of shift. It is not merely changing how films are made; it is beginning to challenge who, or what, gets to create and perform them.

This debate has moved from theory to reality with Tilly Norwood, an AI-generated performer created by Particle 6 through its AI talent division Xicoia. After months of discussion surrounding the role of artificial performers in entertainment, Norwood is now set to headline her own feature film, Misaligned which is a project that places artificial intelligence at the centre of both the production process and the story itself. The film is described as a comedy-drama following an AI character without a tangible existence. The story follows that, guided by another AI character, she begins developing ambitions, emotions, and a desire to understand what it means to become “human” The premise of the movie is intentionally self-reflective. An AI performer, whose very existence has raised questions about authenticity and creativity, will now portray a character experiencing those same conflicts.

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AI as storyteller?

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Using Artificial Intelligence in filmmaking is not recent, for years production studios have used technology for visual effects, editing assistance, restoration, recommendation systems, and production planning. The emergence of AI-generated performers, however, introduces a far more complex question, can AI replace the actors who are core to storytelling?

When Tilly was first introduced at the Zurich film festival in late 2025 by the Dutch producer Eline Van Der Velden, CEO and Founder of Particle 6,  introduced it as a hybrid model of film-making, where there are directors, producers, production team but a "synthetic performer" in the lead role and a comprehensive AI-experts team. Van Der Velden argued that human creativity was not being replaced but supplemented by AI.

This was not well received by the film community. Actors like Emily Blunt and SAG-AFTRA (the Screen Actors Guild- American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) a US labor organization representing roughly 160,000 professionals across the entertainment and media industries, including actors, performers, journalists, musicians, and voice actors, released a statement condemning this project with synthetic performer. They emphasised that ‘creativity is, and should remain, human-centered. The union is opposed to the replacement of human performers by synthetics.’ 

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The Question of Authenticity

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Acting has historically been understood as an interpretation of human experience. Performers bring personal histories, emotions, cultural backgrounds, and individual perspectives into their roles.  The criticism is that an AI actor does not exist in a tangible form and essentially has no real story or background of any kind. Particle 6 describes Tilly only as a twenty-something who lives in London and loves coffee which is a very shallow context and has no personality at all. The film is also set in the fictional "Tillyverse," not a real place and exists on some cloud system reinforcing the sense that there is no lived reality behind the character.

At their core, AI performers are outputs of generative systems rather than individuals with lived experience or personal artistic interpretation. These systems learn by identifying patterns from vast datasets and generating results based on existing material, which raises questions about whether such performances can be considered original creative expression at all. Tilly Norwood's music video ‘Taking the Lead’ illustrated this gap in practice, drawing attention to inconsistencies in natural emotion, visual continuity, and expression across scenes.

Human actors, by contrast, bring authenticity and emotional depth shaped by real experience and creative interpretation which are qualities that recognition and awards have traditionally been built around. If a performance is produced through algorithms trained on existing creative patterns, a fundamental question follows: what exactly is being celebrated, the technology, the final output, or the humans guiding the system?

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Creativity, Consent, and the Legal Grey Areas

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AI performers also raise significant questions about intellectual property, personality rights, consent, and compensation. Existing legal and contractual frameworks were primarily designed around human performers who are individuals who negotiate compensation, own aspects of their identity, and participate in the wider cultural ecosystem surrounding cinema. However, an AI actor challenges these traditional assumptions. If a digital performer does not possess legal personhood, creative ownership, or independent rights, questions emerge regarding who should receive recognition and financial benefits: the developers, production studios, directors, or the human creators involved in building the technology?

Also if a digital actor’s expressions, movements, or style are influenced by thousands of existing performers, determining ownership becomes complicated. Who controls an AI-generated performance? Who deserves credit? Should performers have rights over how their likeness, voice, or style influences future AI systems?

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Any advantages?

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The most significant advantage of AI-assisted filmmaking may lie in what it offers smaller production houses and independent creators. By reducing certain production costs, AI tools could let filmmakers with limited resources attempt ambitious ideas that were previously out of reach. Beyond this production advantage, however, the acceptance of AI performers themselves remains uncertain. Projects like Misaligned are therefore less a proven shift in cinema than an industry experiment testing how far technology can move into a traditionally human creative space.

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The Future of Cinema: Replacement or Reinvention?

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Every major technological transformation in cinema has created fears about what might be lost, yet cinema has consistently adapted by absorbing new technologies into its storytelling. AI may follow a similar path, but the stakes are different as it does not simply change the tools available to artists, it challenges the definitions of creativity, authorship, and performance itself.

Much of cinema's economic and cultural life is really built on the bond between audiences and actors. It's actors who drive ticket sales, build loyal fan followings, and become cultural figures in their own right, through interviews, public appearances, and the visible journey of training, struggle, and growth that shapes a career. An AI-generated performer can mimic parts of that celebrity image, but it can't actually show up for any of it the way a person can. Handing central creative roles to artificial personalities also raises a fairness question, especially at a time when so many human performers are already struggling to find work.

Whether audiences will really embrace fully synthetic performers as stand-ins for human actors is still an open question. Misaligned may end up being the first real test of that. Early reaction to Tilly Norwood has been largely critical within the industry and among audiences. How viewers respond to Misaligned itself will be an early test of whether that scepticism holds. 

Cinema has always found ways to absorb new technology, but AI is testing something deeper than the tools filmmakers use. As machines get better at telling human stories, the real challenge is making sure the human element behind those stories doesn't get lost.

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References

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• https://theprint.in/feature/tilly-norwood-tillyverse-misaligned-particle6-ai-actor/2980654/
• https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tilly-norwood-ai-generated-actor-feature-film/ 
• https://www.sagaftra.org/sag-aftra-statement-synthetic-performer
• https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/ai-actor-tilly-norwood-movie-debut-misaligned-1236638719/

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Introduction‍

Netizens across the globe have been enjoying the fruits of technological advancements in the digital century. Our personal and professional life has been impacted deeply by the new technologies. The previous year we saw an exponential rise in blockchain integration and the applications of Web 3.0. There is no denying that the Covid-19 pandemic caused a rapid rise in technology and internet penetration all across the globe, bringing the world closer with respect to connectivity and the exchange of ideas and knowledge. Tech advancements have definitely made our lives easier, but the same has also opened the doors to various vulnerabilities and new potential threats. As cyberspace expands, so do the vulnerabilities associated with it, and it is critical we take note of such issues and create safeguards to the extent that such incidents are prevented before they occur. We need to create sustainable and secure cyberspace for future generations.MetaVerse in 2023The metaverse was introduced by Facebook (now Meta) in 2021 as a peak into the future of cyberspace. Since then, tech developers have been working towards arming the metaverse with extraordinary innovations and applications. Netizens came across news like someone bought a house or a plot in the metaverse, someone bought a car in the metaverse, and so on, these news were taken to be the evidence of the netizen’s transition towards the new digital age as we have seen in sci-fi movies. But today this type of news has become history and the metaverse is expanding faster than ever. Let us look at the latest developments and trends in the metaverse-

• Avatar creation - The avatar creation in the metaverse will be a pivotal move as the avatars will represent the user, and essentially it will be the digital, version of the user and will be similar to the user's personal and physical traits to maintain realism in the metaverse.
• Architecture firms - Metaverse has its own set of architects who will be working towards creating your dream home or pro[erty in the metaverse, the heavy code-based services are now being sold just as if they were in the physical space.
• Mining - The metaverse already has companies who are mining gold, silver, petroleum, and other resources for the avatars in the metaverse, for instance, if someone has bought a car in the metaverse, it will still need fuel to run.
• Security firms - These firms are the first line of defenders in the metaverse as they provide tech-based solutions and protocols to secure one’s avatar and belongings in the metaverse.
• Metaverse Police - Interpol, along with its global partner organization has created the metaverse police, who will be working towards creating a safe cyber ecosystem by maintaining compliance with digital laws and ethics.

Advancements beyond metaverse in 2023

‍Technology continues to be a critical force for change in the world. Technology breakthroughs give enterprises more possibilities to lift their productivity and invent offerings. And while it remains difficult to forecast how technology trends will play out, business leaders can plan ahead better by watching the development of new technologies, anticipating how companies could utilize them, and understanding the factors that impact innovation and adoption.

• Applied observability

It advances the practice of pattern recognition. To foresee and identify abnormalities and offer solutions, one must have the capacity to delve deeply into complicated systems and a stream of data. Data fuels this aspect of tech growth in the future.

• Digital Immune System

To ensure that all major systems operate round-the-clock to deliver uninterrupted services, Digital Immune System will combine observability, AI-augmented testing, chaos engineering, site reliability engineering (SRE), and software supply chain security. This will take the efficiency of the systems to a new level.

• Super apps

These represent the upcoming shift in application usage, design, and development, where consumers will utilise a single app to manage most systems in an enterprise ecosystem. Over 50% of the world’s population will utilise super apps on a daily basis to fulfill their daily personal and professional needs.

• AR/VR and BlockChain technology

A combination of better interconnected, safe, and immersive virtual environments where people and businesses may recreate real-life scenarios will be created by combining AR/VR, AI/ML, IoT, and Blockchain, thus creating a new vertical of innovation with keen technologies of Web 3.0.

• AAI

The next level of AI, i.e., Advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI), will revolutionise machine learning, pattern recognition, and computing. It aims to fully automate processes without requiring any manual input, thus eradicating the issues of human error and bad actor influence completely.

• Corporate Metaverse

Aside from its power as a marketing tool, the metaverse promises to provide platforms, tools, and entire virtual worlds where business can be done remotely, efficiently, and intelligently. We can expect to see the metaverse concept merge with the idea of the “digital twin” – virtual simulations of real-world products, processes, or operations that can be used to test and prototype new ideas in the safe environment of the digital domain. From wind farms to Formula 1 cars, designers are recreating physical objects inside virtual worlds where their efficiency can be stress-tested under any conceivable condition without the resource costs that would be incurred by testing them in the physical world.ConclusionIn 2023, we will see more advanced use cases for technology such as motion capture, which will mean that as well as looking and sounding more like us, our avatars will adopt our own unique gestures and body language. We may even start to see further developments in the fields of autonomous avatars – meaning they won't be under our direct control but will be enabled by AI to act as our representatives in the digital world while we ourselves get on with other, completely unrelated tasks. As we go deeper into cyberspace, we need to remember the basic safety practices and inculcate them with respect to cyberspace and work towards creating string policies and legislations to safeguard the digital rights and duties of the netizen to create a wholesome and interdependent cyber ecosystem.

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Introduction

In the digital realm of social media, Meta Platforms, the driving force behind Facebook and Instagram, faces intense scrutiny following The Wall Street Journal's investigative report. This exploration delves deeper into critical issues surrounding child safety on these widespread platforms, unravelling algorithmic intricacies, enforcement dilemmas, and the ethical maze surrounding monetisation features. Instances of "parent-managed minor accounts" leveraging Meta's subscription tools to monetise content featuring young individuals have raised eyebrows. While skirting the line of legality, this practice prompts concerns due to its potential appeal to adults and the associated inappropriate interactions. It's a nuanced issue demanding nuanced solutions.

Failed Algorithms 

The very heartbeat of Meta's digital ecosystem, its algorithms, has come under intense scrutiny. These algorithms, designed to curate and deliver content, were found to actively promoting accounts featuring explicit content to users with known pedophilic interests. The revelation sparks a crucial conversation about the ethical responsibilities tied to the algorithms shaping our digital experiences. Striking the right balance between personalised content delivery and safeguarding users is a delicate task.

While algorithms play a pivotal role in tailoring content to users' preferences, Meta needs to reevaluate the algorithms to ensure they don't inadvertently promote inappropriate content. Stricter checks and balances within the algorithmic framework can help prevent the inadvertent amplification of content that may exploit or endanger minors.

Major Enforcement Challenges

Meta's enforcement challenges have come to light as previously banned parent-run accounts resurrect, gaining official verification and accumulating large followings. The struggle to remove associated backup profiles adds layers to concerns about the effectiveness of Meta's enforcement mechanisms. It underscores the need for a robust system capable of swift and thorough actions against policy violators.

To enhance enforcement mechanisms, Meta should invest in advanced content detection tools and employ a dedicated team for consistent monitoring. This proactive approach can mitigate the risks associated with inappropriate content and reinforce a safer online environment for all users.

The financial dynamics of Meta's ecosystem expose concerns about the exploitation of videos that are eligible for cash gifts from followers. The decision to expand the subscription feature before implementing adequate safety measures poses ethical questions. Prioritising financial gains over user safety risks tarnishing the platform's reputation and trustworthiness. A re-evaluation of this strategy is crucial for maintaining a healthy and secure online environment.

To address safety concerns tied to monetisation features, Meta should consider implementing stricter eligibility criteria for content creators. Verifying the legitimacy and appropriateness of content before allowing it to be monetised can act as a preventive measure against the exploitation of the system.

Meta's Response 

In the aftermath of the revelations, Meta's spokesperson, Andy Stone, took centre stage to defend the company's actions. Stone emphasised ongoing efforts to enhance safety measures, asserting Meta's commitment to rectifying the situation. However, critics argue that Meta's response lacks the decisive actions required to align with industry standards observed on other platforms. The debate continues over the delicate balance between user safety and the pursuit of financial gain. A more transparent and accountable approach to addressing these concerns is imperative.

To rebuild trust and credibility, Meta needs to implement concrete and visible changes. This includes transparent communication about the steps taken to address the identified issues, continuous updates on progress, and a commitment to a user-centric approach that prioritises safety over financial interests.

The formation of a task force in June 2023 was a commendable step to tackle child sexualisation on the platform. However, the effectiveness of these efforts remains limited. Persistent challenges in detecting and preventing potential child safety hazards underscore the need for continuous improvement. Legislative scrutiny adds an extra layer of pressure, emphasising the urgency for Meta to enhance its strategies for user protection.

To overcome ongoing challenges, Meta should collaborate with external child safety organisations, experts, and regulators. Open dialogues and partnerships can provide valuable insights and recommendations, fostering a collaborative approach to creating a safer online environment.

Drawing a parallel with competitors such as Patreon and OnlyFans reveals stark differences in child safety practices. While Meta grapples with its challenges, these platforms maintain stringent policies against certain content involving minors. This comparison underscores the need for universal industry standards to safeguard minors effectively. Collaborative efforts within the industry to establish and adhere to such standards can contribute to a safer digital environment for all.

To align with industry standards, Meta should actively participate in cross-industry collaborations and adopt best practices from platforms with successful child safety measures. This collaborative approach ensures a unified effort to protect users across various digital platforms.

Conclusion

Navigating the intricate landscape of child safety concerns on Meta Platforms demands a nuanced and comprehensive approach. The identified algorithmic failures, enforcement challenges, and controversies surrounding monetisation features underscore the urgency for Meta to reassess and fortify its commitment to being a responsible digital space. As the platform faces this critical examination, it has an opportunity to not only rectify the existing issues but to set a precedent for ethical and secure social media engagement.

This comprehensive exploration aims not only to shed light on the existing issues but also to provide a roadmap for Meta Platforms to evolve into a safer and more responsible digital space. The responsibility lies not just in acknowledging shortcomings but in actively working towards solutions that prioritise the well-being of its users.

References

• https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/gadgets-news/instagram-facebook-prioritised-money-over-child-safety-claims-report/articleshow/107952778.cms
• https://www.adweek.com/blognetwork/meta-staff-found-instagram-tool-enabled-child-exploitation-the-company-pressed-ahead-anyway/107604/
• https://www.tbsnews.net/tech/meta-staff-found-instagram-subscription-tool-facilitated-child-exploitation-yet-company

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