The AI actor Hollywood loves to hate is getting her own movie

Tilly Norwood, the artificial intelligence creation that has sparked an uproar in Hollywood, is about to star in her first feature-length movie.

Particle6, an AI-focused studio based in London, announced that the AI-generated “actor” will be the lead character in “Misaligned,” described as a “coming-of-age story infused with existential AI chaos.” The studio says the production will use human creatives, including writers and directors, to work alongside AI experts.

“Our work this year has proven something we suspected all along,” Particle6 founder and Tilly Norwood creator Eline Van Der Velden said in a statement. “AI can support premium narrative filmmaking, but only with substantial amounts of human craft, skill, judgement and time. That’s not a limitation of the technology. That’s the point. The filmmakers who thrive in the next decade will be the ones who bring decades of storytelling instinct to these new tools, and ‘Misaligned’ is where we put that to work at feature scale.”

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The film is set in the “Tillyverse,” a surreal digital place located somewhere in the Cloud, where Tilly is a disembodied AI being with no lived experience of her own but with access to those of real humans.

“Things spiral when a seductive rogue bot from the dark web convinces her to abandon her guardrails and begin developing desires, impulses and ambitions of her own,” Particle6 revealed in a statement about the film. “The more terrifyingly human she becomes, the more famous she gets, and, significantly, Tilly begins to develop shame that her very being has been built on the whole of humanity.”

Tilly publicly debuted in September 2025, when Van Der Velden, a Dutch actor and entrepreneur, said the creation was attracting interest from Hollywood talent agencies as “the next Scarlett Johansson.” The news sparked backlash from celebrities, including Melissa Barrera, Whoopi Goldberg and Toni Collette, some of whom called for a boycott of any talent agency that represents the AI actor.

“Hope all actors repped by the agent that does this, drop their a$$,” Barrera, the star of “In the Heights” (2011) and “Scream” (2022), wrote on Instagram. “How gross, read the room.”

Van Der Velden maintains that Tilly was never intended to replace human beings but is simply “a creative work — a piece of art.”

“Like many forms of art before her, she sparks conversation, and that in itself shows the power of creativity,” Van Der Velden posted on Instagram on Sept. 28.

Van Der Velden has pushed back against the criticism with an op-ed in Variety in January, in which she urged performers to build their own AI counterparts to protect their careers. Particle6 even produced a music video for the song “Take the Lead” that starred Tilly, released in March, in which the virtual character sings, “AI’s not the enemy, it’s the key.”