AI ‘Actress’ Tilly Norwood Suddenly Starts Speaking Cantonese During Bizarre Interview

If a real-life, flesh-and-blood Hollywood actress suddenly started speaking an entirely different language mid-sentence during a TV interview, the tabloids and the wider internet would have a field day. They’d rip her to shreds, call her crazy, and say she’s lost her mind. But if that actress is an AI, why, that’s just par for the course!

Of course, AI “actress” Tilly Norwood would (and did) seemingly short-circuit and start speaking Cantonese in the middle of an interview with both Piers Morgan and real-life flesh-and-blood Scottish stage actor Tom Conti.

The surreal moment happened on Piers Morgan Uncensored. For those unaware, Norwood is a generative AI “actress” created by a London-based company called Particle6. Norwood, an entirely fictional actress, has been making the promotional rounds to promote an upcoming movie called Misaligned.

AI ‘Actress’ Freezes Mid-Interview, Then Starts Speaking an Entirely Different Language

Conti, who you might remember playing Albert Einstein in Oppenheimer, asked the digital puppet Norwood whether her co-stars were actual human beings or also generative AI inventions. Norwood took a long, odd pause before she started rambling something about “digital twins.”

It almost seemed like the kind of dodge deployed by veteran human actors and directors who have learned how to say something without saying anything directly related to the question asked. But that’s not what was going on here. Norwood stared straight into the viewers’ souls for a long time before seemingly coming back to life, but now speaking in Cantonese.

Morgan, seemingly half-baffled, half-entertained knowing he had viral gold on his hands here, asked the babbling Norwood why she was suddenly speaking Chinese. Norwood waved it off as a technical hiccup.

Seemingly desperate to spin this as anything other than unnerving, Particle6 CEO Eline van der Velden told Deadline that it wasn’t a mistake; no, it was just Tilly showing off: “Tilly can be a bit of a showoff — I’m guessing she just wanted to show her language skills, as most of her interviews to date have been in English. She is autonomous after all.”

Sure, because even if it was just Tilly showing off, someone suddenly speaking to you in a completely different language is normal behavior that real people are totally cool with.

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