Tilly Norwood, the first AI generated “actor” created by the AI development company Particle6, appeared in the summer of 2025 with an Instagram account full of modeling photos, clips, and even a short comedic video. In her introduction video, she’s described as “doing anything,” and she also doesn’t require directors and writers to obtain consent for romantic scenes—that can be ignored since she can be programmed to do anything.
More recently, Norwood was featured in a music video titled “Take the Lead” that was posted on YouTube this past March. There, Norwood sings about being “just a tool” while insisting “I’ve got life.” Other lyrics repeatedly promise “AI’s not the enemy/It’s the key.” The video shows Norwood in scenes of building popularity, from an adoring crowd on a sidewalk to fashion photo shoots to a little girl with a Tilly doll. The video ends with Norwood in a purple sparkly jumpsuit flying through the clouds on an inflatable flamingo pool float. Cavorting dolphins worthy of Lisa Frank swim in the sky while a luxurious, inflatable “Tillyverse” house emerges from the mist. The song assures the listener that this is the next evolutionary step.
We don’t have to strive towards an AI-generated perfection. Instead, we can glory in our flawed, unfiltered selves.
AI technology has certainly made strides in recent years, and Tilly Norwood’s arrival can be seen as the next step. Her picture-perfect look is a natural outgrowth of years of photo retouching and social media filters. Anyone with a social media account or a mobile phone knows the pressure of taking “the perfect selfie.” But even if that perfect photo isn’t attainable, or the children and friends don’t pose just so, there are a myriad of techniques and adjustments (including AI filters) that can be used to make the picture (and the people in them) appear perfect.
Certainly, applying filters or removing shadows isn’t sinful, and yet what that whispers to us is that we need to look younger, more flawless, more perfect. Tilly Norwood is an apex of this trend. She won’t age, get dirty (unless she’s programmed to), or have any flaws. Just as she does in the music video, she can appear to eat hundreds of cookies and never gain an ounce.
The need for perfection seen in this latest AI arrival, or even in social media’s filtered, perfected photos, can be seen as yet another iteration of the gnostic heresy of Docetism. This early second-century argument saw matter and the physical world as inherently evil. Only the spiritual world had value and was redeemable. Because the physical world was evil, Jesus was therefore not incarnated into a real human body. Instead, he just appeared to have one.
Rather than sullying his heavenly self with the dirtiness of humanity, he just appeared to participate in our matter-filled world. Jesus didn’t get hurt, grow weary, feel hungry, or age. He just appeared to do all those things. Some who believed this heresy even went so far as to deny the Resurrection. If Jesus only appeared to suffer and die on a cross, they reasoned, then he wouldn’t need to rise from the dead. Similarly, Tilly Norwood just appears to have a human body, but she doesn’t. Not really. Her shiny, perfect façade has no connection to the human condition.
The season of Lent, the forty days spent before Easter, starts on Ash Wednesday. During an Ash Wednesday service, the people are reminded, through the imposition of ashes, that “you are dust, and to dust you will return.” Some may view it depressing or overly sad, this dwelling on one’s mortality. But it reminds us that we are not alone. Christians can be reminded that Jesus’ incarnation was indeed that: the Son made human.
He didn’t just appear to be human, but in fact, fully entered the human experience. Instead of the illusion of a shiny, unflawed façade, Christ lived out the human condition and all its difficulties. He didn’t have an unending supply of manna to stop his hunger or a magically refilling cup of water to slake his thirst. He said he was hungry, he needed naps and time by himself, and even needed to wash his dirty feet. And it was in his actual human body that he actually suffered and died on a cross. He didn’t just appear to do so.
Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent are a time to remember the pain of the human condition, to remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return. But it’s also a time to remember that because Christ became a human—because he got dirty, tired, and weary—it’s OK that we do as well. And perhaps, that’s where the Church can respond to Tilly Norwood and the empty, inhuman perfection that she represents. She’s too perfect, too infallible, and too removed from us. But that was never true of Jesus, who entered into our dirt, hunger, joy, sadness, and weariness. And it was through his entering that he elevated and redeemed those things. Because he was incarnate, we can be, too. We don’t have to strive towards an AI-generated perfection. Instead, we can glory in our flawed, unfiltered selves.
