Particle6 releases AI pop promo starring Tilly Norwood

Particle6 has released a pop promo featuring its AI character Tilly Norwood.

The song, called Take the Lead sees Norwood, who Particle6 describes as “the world’s first AI actor” front a pop-meets-musical-theatre “anthem” that lyrically extols the virtues of AI and attempts to convince actors to embrace AI “not as a threat, but as their next creative superpower,” says Particle6.

The music video release comes ahead of Norwood’s AI acting debut, which is scheduled for later this year.

The video is set in Tillyverse, which Particle6 says is “a new entertainment world - based in the cloud - where AI characters live, interact and work”.

The song, Take the Lead, is inspired by an essay written by Particle6 CEO Eline van der Velden, with the lyrics reflecting on last year’s backlash following Tilly’s debut on the global stage. The lyrics also focus heavily on what Particle6 says is the humanity and creativity involved in the creation of Tilly Norwood.

The idea behind the pop promo is to “show how AI technology is rapidly evolving and how Particle6, as leaders in this space, is always testing, learning and using the latest techniques to push creative boundaries with original work,” says the company.

The song itself was AI generated using Suno, and the video created using a range of different AI tools and performance capture (with van der Velden acting out Norwood’s performance).

18 people worked on the project, including an executive producer, director, production designer, costume designer, creative prompter, creative technologist, comedy writer, editor, production assistant, production co-ordinator and an actor.

Van der Velden said: “Tilly is, and has always been, a vehicle to test the creative capabilities and boundaries of AI – not take anyone’s job. As an actor myself, I have loved bringing Tilly alive for this video and feel that the ability to now use performance capture in this way, to fully inhabit an AI character, is a phenomenal way to bring an unknown actor like me closer to the craft.

“However, at the end of the day, even with brilliant new technology, it’s still important to stress that great AI content isn’t instant — it always takes good ideas, taste, direction, judgement and time. In other words: people remain at the heart of it.”

The video has been on YouTube for 24 hours so far and has received 69K views in that time and more than 1,000 comments.

The comments are almost universally critical of the song, video, lyrics and, more broadly, of this type of AI generated content.

However, Take the Lead gets a much better reception in the comments left on Tilly Norwood’s Instragram page, where the majority of comments are largely complimentary both about the song and video and about the creation of Tilly in the first place.