To Call AI Actress Tilly Norwood, You'll Have to Show Your Face to a Scanner

Tilly Norwood, the AI actress starring in the upcoming AI-generated film Misaligned, is back in the spotlight: during an episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored she unexpectedly "glitched" and started speaking Chinese. The clip has been watched more than eight million times. Her creators have launched a service called Talking Tilly that lets anyone connect with the character over video — and a Bleeping Computer reporter dug into what lurks in the fine print.

First, a face scan

Before you can connect, you have to pass an automated age check. A video selfie is analyzed by the Spanish verification service Didit, which estimates your age; if there's any doubt, you're asked to upload an ID. Xicoia Ltd, the British company behind Tilly, insists the selfie goes straight to Didit, that no biometric template is created, and that the images themselves aren't stored — all that remains is an approximate age range and a reference number. There's no way to skip the check, and it applies to callers worldwide. The requirement only appeared this month — alongside a ban on workplace use and new safety systems.

The surveillance doesn't stop there. During every conversation the system watches the camera and listens to your tone of voice to gauge your emotional state and tailor its responses to your mood. The privacy policy candidly warns that, for an individual call, this "cannot be turned off." The legal basis for both the age check and the emotion reading is "legitimate interests" — not the user's consent.

Calls are recorded, transcribed, and processed by American providers, and the character's lines are generated by Google's Gemini model via the Tavus platform. The safety systems, meanwhile, misfire: one of the author's three calls — an innocuous chat about the weather and the news — was blocked for "hateful or offensive language" that never occurred.

Five minutes free, then the meter runs

The first five minutes are free, after which you're offered the chance to buy more time: £0.99 for a trial five minutes, £13 for 15, £22 for 30, but no more than 35 minutes per person. All of this, however, is a limited-time promotion: any minutes expire on September 27, when Talking Tilly is switched off for good.

In the spirit of British regulation

A biometric age gate for chatting with a chatbot seems like a novelty, but it fits the British trajectory. Since July 2025, adult sites have already required age verification by face or document under the Online Safety Act, and from spring 2027 similar checks await everyone signing up for social media. In announcing the ban, the government explicitly mentioned AI companions — though the developers insist that "Tilly is not a companion." The side effect: a decision made to comply with British rules now scans the faces of callers everywhere, from Manchester to Ohio.

Asked about the Chinese-language mishap, Tilly herself replied that it "wasn't quite an approved version of the answer." Whether the glitch was an accident or a well-calculated stunt by the Misaligned team, only she knows.

Source: Bleeping Computer