Tilly Norwood debate: synthetic performers as production infrastructure beats novelty deepfakes
alexvoica · x · 2026-09-23
alexvoica weighed in on the Tilly Norwood controversy and generative video in entertainment:
- The problem: the dominant business model for synthetic female personas is deepfake porn, AI girlfriends, and fake ads — with Chinese e-commerce making heavy use of AI likenesses and some startups generating hundreds of millions in revenue from girlfriends-as-a-service. That's not something to import wholesale into Europe or North America.
- The real opportunity: film/TV still spends enormously on green screens and CGI reconstruction; generative video can compress that. Higgsfield and Runway are interesting because they're used as production infrastructure, not performer substitutes.
- Beyond entertainment: avatars that talk, listen and act are genuinely useful interfaces inside products, internal tools, training flows, support and kiosks.
His verdict: deepfake celebrities bet on novelty; giving software a face, voice and agency bets on utility — one is a gimmick, the other a business.
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