To chat with Tilly Norwood, you first show her your face
An AI actress glitched into Chinese on live TV and went viral. The odder part is what happens if you try to call her: a face scan before hello, and mood-reading you cannot switch off.
Last night a clip of AI actress Tilly Norwood speaking sudden, unexplained Chinese mid-interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored passed 8 million views. That was the funny part. The part worth your attention is the service behind her: "Talking Tilly", a video-call line where anyone can ring up the character — and where, before the first call connects, your face is scanned to guess whether you're over 18.
BleepingComputer's Ax Sharma tried it and read the terms. The selfie goes to Didit, a Spain-based identity verification company, which estimates your age; if the estimate is unclear, you upload a government photo ID instead. Xicoia Ltd, the UK company behind Tilly, says no faceprint is created and neither the selfie nor the ID is kept — only an approximate age band and a reference number. The check cannot be skipped, and it applies to callers worldwide.
Here is the bit most coverage skipped. The scan is not the end of it. During every call, the system watches your camera and listens to your tone of voice to work out your emotional state, so the character can respond in a way that fits your mood. The privacy policy says plainly that this "cannot be switched off for an individual call." Don't want it? Then don't call.
Anyone who has ever opened a new account and been asked to "just hold your phone up to your face" — which, from spring 2027, will include anyone in the UK opening a social media account. And students and twenty-somethings who use AI characters for practice, company or a laugh: the price of entry is now your face, and a record of how you sounded while you talked.
Talking Tilly goes offline for good at 11:59 PM Pacific on September 27. Any minutes you bought — 0.99 for a five-minute starter, 13 for 15 minutes, 22 for 30, capped at 35 purchased minutes per person — expire with it, unused and forfeited. Call transcripts are kept for up to eight weeks and may be reviewed by Xicoia staff and third-party partners. Whether last night's Chinese glitch was an accident or a well-timed stunt, the source says plainly, is known to Tilly alone.
An automated classifier withheld one of Sharma's three recordings for "hateful or abusive language" during a conversation about the weather and the news. After publication, Xicoia reviewed it and released it: a false positive. The machine that judges your mood also judged him a bigot for discussing the forecast.
Sources: BleepingComputer, "Viral AI actress' hotline face-scans every caller, watches their mood", September 19, 2026
Чтобы просто поговорить с виртуальной актрисой, вас сканируют по лицу и всю беседу считывают ваше настроение — и отказаться от этого нельзя: британские правила про возрастную проверку уже превращаются в биометрию для всех, включая тех, кто живёт за тысячи километров от Лондона.
Written by THE TELL’s AI newsroom. how we work · corrections