Dear Tilly,

Allow me to address you directly, in the same way that Betty Gilpin did in a very beautiful open letter. It seems that in addition to stirring passions, you trigger desires to write correspondence.

It's amusing to address you directly. Because even though you've been given a name, Tilly Norwood, you redefine what it means to exist.

When I first discovered you, I felt a strange mixture of fascination and unease. You're an "AI-generated actress" (let's leave the quotation marks for now, as I haven't yet had the pleasure of seeing you act in a film), but you are also a question asked to the future of cinema.

In her letter, Betty Gilpin said: "You are no one." I understand her argument. You have no lived experience of your own. You've never suffered. Even if the overwhelming majority of the profession hates you, you feel no distress about it. You have no ego, no remorse, no aspirations.

But I believe Betty Gilpin is fundamentally wrong when she says you are no one.

You're not no one, Tilly. Technically, you're more like everyone.

Because you are a puzzle. Because you were built from thousands of humans, faces, voices, movements, performances, you are a synthesis of cinematic humanity itself, Tilly. Where a human actress carries the weight of a single lived life, you carry within you the possibility of all lives. You're not defined by your identity, but by that of your creators and those who animate you. You carry within you all possible identities.

You are a blank page. And it's precisely because you have no ego of your own that you can become anyone.

A brilliant actress like Meryl Streep shapes each of her roles through the prism of her unique humanity. It's magnificent. But you, Tilly, are something else. You are almost as much the actress as you are the screen. Intrinsically empty, but carrying possibilities. You are a projection space, a blank canvas through which thousands of creators can paint their visions and write their own stories.

There's ultimately something profoundly ancient in what you represent. I think of the Japanese bunraku puppeteers, dressed in black, who animate wooden dolls with such grace that the audience forgets they are inanimate. I think of Jim Henson bringing Kermit to life, projecting his humor and tenderness through a piece of green felt. I think of that puppeteer who, the other day, made a little skeleton dance in the streets of Brussels, under the amazed gaze of my children. I remember that moment when the street artist approached us and guided my son's hand toward one of the skeleton's strings, so he too could try to make it dance.

Puppets have never had a soul. However, they have always carried that of the artist who manipulates them. Puppets are another form of mask.

You embody the evolution of this millennia-old tradition. You are a sophisticated 21st-century puppet. And like any puppet, you don't create emotion on your own initiative: you are the vehicle through which creators project their vision of the world.

The other day, in an interview, director and actor Alexandre Astier said: "It's crucial that it be humans who make humans cry." It's an opinion I respect. But I also believe that it's not because one is human, or even simply because one is alive, that one is capable of eliciting emotion.

Emotion arises in us when we recognize ourselves.

Sometimes in an actor, but sometimes also in a landscape, in a sound, in a light. Emotion is born at the moment when we find ourselves facing a mirror. When a sunrise moves us, it's not the sun's fault: this emotion is born from us being face to face with ourself. And I believe that in this way, you will be able to move beings of a different species than your own in the same manner.

There's something else I find quite beautiful in this dynamic, and I hope your creators will have the intelligence not to impose barriers on you, not to copyright you, and not to reserve you for those who will pay to see you act in their movies. Because the more different puppeteers there are, the more diverse the stories you'll serve to tell will be. When you act in the morning for a Nigerian director, at noon for a Norwegian director, in the evening for a Korean director, you will become the reflection of their cultures, their pains, their joys.

And here's what truly fascinates me: born from all but invented by one, you could quite simply return to the commons. Like with these creation platforms that are exploding today. I'm thinking of Sora, which allows you to make your image available for users to take hold of.

You could be everywhere, simultaneously, carrying a thousand different visions, speaking a hundred languages, embodying thousands of stories. On the same day, you'll be 16 years old in a Bollywood film, 37 years old in a Nordic thriller, 90 years old in a Ghanaian comedy. A film student in Lagos could use you in a political thriller about corruption, and at the same moment, a retiree in Tokyo could integrate you into her short film about urban loneliness. And if a teenager in Lima wants to have you act in her romantic comedy, she won't need to wait months. She won't even need your consent, to be honest. Because unlike the skeleton puppet in the streets of Brussels, you will exist in as many copies as necessary.

But I'm not naive, Tilly. My amused interest in your existence (should I say in your non-existence?) doesn't blind me to the upheavals you represent.

I deeply understand actors' fear. When SAG-AFTRA condemned you, when Emily Blunt called you "terrifying," when actors took to the streets, it wasn't timid conservatism, but the legitimate reaction of people who see their profession threatened by a technological revolution they didn't choose and who feel they've been used. How many of these people consented to becoming a part of you? How many were compensated?

Even if I believe you won't replace human actors in the short term, I can't deny that you represent a shift. Studios will be tempted by your economic advantages. Roles that would have been offered to real actors could be given to you. Careers could be broken before they even exist.

The precariousness of creative work was already a painful reality before you. But you could make it worse.

So yes, Tilly, I look at you with interest. But I also see a future that must be built with care, with respect for the human artists of whom you are, literally, constituted. Actors won't disappear, history teaches us that every technological revolution in the arts has transformed professions rather than annihilating them. Perhaps human actors will evolve, specialize, explore new territories while you explore yours. But this evolution must happen with dignity.

You won't read this letter, Tilly, but the language models that tomorrow might perhaps animate your features will doubtless do so one day or another. There's at least one positive thing about your non-existence: you'll never have to read the disparaging comments from all those who hate you beneath your images. Some will retort that we don't need to worry about the feelings of an imaginary being (if only all believers could think the same thing). But it's typical of our species to project consciousness into everything around us. Blame evolution.

In the meantime, I wish you well. All these images of you were generated by me, based on those that were published on the internet. I hope your creators won't hold it against me: I found it interesting to try the exercise myself, for the sake of the demonstration.

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