Hollywood's synthetic actor showdown

PLUS: Build an AI calendar agent using n8n

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Hollywood studios have gone from dismissing AI to pursuing deals with AI personas in just months — and Tilly Norwood is about to test just how far they'll go.

With a “synthetic actor” nearing agency deals while human talent threatens boycotts, we might be witnessing the entertainment industry's most uncomfortable transformation yet.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • AI actress Tilly Norwood nears talent agency deal

  • Apple’s internal ChatGPT-style Siri app

  • Build an AI calendar agent using n8n

  • AI ‘workslop’ costing companies millions

  • 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AI & HOLLYWOOD

Image source: Particle6 Productions

The Rundown: AI talent studio Xicoia just revealed that its AI actress, Tilly Norwood, is in negotiations with multiple Hollywood talent firms, sparking backlash from actors who called for boycotts of any agencies that sign synthetic performers.

The details:

  • Norwood debuted in a comedy sketch last month, with Xicoia developing unique backstories, voices, and narrative arcs for the character.

  • Xicoia is a spin-out of production studio Particle6, with founder Eline Van der Velden wanting Tilly to “be the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman”.

  • Van der Velden said studios went from dismissing AI to actively pursuing deals in just months, claiming that “the age of synthetic actors isn’t coming, it’s here.”

  • Several actors spoke out against the potential talent deal, calling for other performers to drop the agency that signs Norwood.

Why it matters: Between Norwood and AI musician Xania Monet, things are getting weird fast — and at least some parts of Hollywood appear to be moving past initial AI hesitations. But given the reactions from actors and previous strikes from unions, ‘synthetic actors’ and public personas are going to be a VERY polarizing topic.

TOGETHER WITH VANTA

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Get compliant fast with Vanta – trusted by top startups like Cursor, Linear, and Replit.

APPLE

Image source: Seedream 4.0 / The Rundown

The Rundown: Apple has developed an internal chatbot codenamed “Veritas” that employees are using to stress-test for Siri's AI overhaul, according to Bloomberg, with the company scrambling to salvage its voice assistant upgrade after massive delays.

The details:

  • Veritas allows Apple’s AI division to experiment with capabilities like searching personal data and editing photos with voice commands.

  • The ChatGPT-like app is testing the “Linwood” system, which utilizes both Apple’s in-house models and third-party options.

  • Engineering problems pushed the original AI-powered Siri launch to March 2026, prompting executive reshuffles and a talent drain to other AI labs.

  • Apple is reportedly not planning to launch Veritas as a standalone app like competitors, instead just embedding the features into Siri directly.

Why it matters: Apple doesn’t appear to want to compete in the chatbot market directly, and given both the insane level of competition and the tech giant’s current AI issues, that feels like the correct move. But March is coming fast — and with Apple bleeding talent and the industry continuing to level up, the situation still feels dire.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to build an AI calendar agent in n8n that schedules events for you directly in your calendar using natural language commands instead of forms and date pickers.

Step-by-step:

  1. Go to n8n.io, create your account, click "Create workflow," and press Tab to add an AI Agent node to the canvas

  2. Configure the AI Agent by selecting a chat model (GPT-4o mini), adding Google Calendar as a tool, and authenticating with OAuth credentials

  3. Set the tool description to "Create calendar events" and add the current date/time to the system message using "{$now}" for proper context

  4. Test by typing "Schedule dinner for tonight from 7 to 9 p.m." in the chat panel and verify the event appears in your Google Calendar

Pro Tip: Take this workflow further by connecting to WhatsApp or Telegram so you can message your agent instead of opening n8n.

PRESENTED BY ASSEMBLY AI

The Rundown: AssemblyAI is the speech-to-text API behind the next generation of Voice AI apps, including companies like Granola, Cluely, and Dovetail. With high accuracy and low latency, it’s an industry-leading infrastructure for building scalable Conversational AI.

With one API, you’ll get:

  • Accurate transcription at 93.3%

  • Pay as you go from $0.15/hr

  • Unlimited concurrency

AI RESEARCH

Image source: BetterUp Labs and Harvard Business Review

The Rundown: Stanford and BetterUp Labs surveyed 1,100+ U.S. workers about AI "workslop,” polished but hollow outputs that shift real work to other employees, finding that 41% of respondents encountered such content in the last month.

The details:

  • The research found that workslop forced recipients to spend an average of 116 minutes decoding or redoing each piece.

  • Respondents estimated that 15.4% of content now qualifies as workslop, with BetterUp calculating an invisible tax of $186/mo per worker in lost productivity.

  • Professional services and tech sectors face the highest concentrations, with workslop flowing primarily between colleagues and lesser so to managers.

  • The research also investigated the collaboration impacts, with recipients finding colleagues who sent workslop less trustworthy, reliable, and creative.

Why it matters: AI is ripping through the workplace — but like we’ve seen in the education system, many are choosing to offload cognitive tasks entirely instead of using the tech as a collaborative tool. With adoption rising alongside AI model capabilities, workslop may soon3 become both more prevalent and even harder to spot.

QUICK HITS

  • 🤖 Notion Agent- A Notion power user that understands the way you work, handling multi-step tasks and saving hours with one prompt*

  • 🎆 HunyuanImage 3.0 - Tencent’s new open-source text-to-image model

  • 🗞️ ChatGPT Pulse - Proactive, personalized morning briefings

  • ⚙️ Factory - Software development agent with top scores on Terminal-Bench

*Sponsored Listing

Meta poached another major AI researcher from OpenAI, with Yang Song leaving to be the new research principal at MSL under Shengjia Zhao (also formerly at OpenAI).

Tencent open-sourced HunyuanImage 3.0, a new text-to-image model that the company says compares to the industry’s top closed options.

Google released new updates to its Gemini 2.5 Flash and Flash-Lite models, with upgrades including agentic tool performance, efficiency, and instruction following.

Exa released exa-code, a tool that helps AI coding assistants find hyper-relevant web context to significantly reduce LLM hallucinations.

OpenAI’s new Applications CEO, Fidji Simo, is reportedly recruiting a new executive to lead monetization and advertising efforts for ChatGPT.

AI image startup Black Forest Labs is reportedly set to raise as much as $300M in a new round that would push the German company’s valuation to $4B.

COMMUNITY

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Darren J. in Spartanburg, SC:

"I use AI as a coach, particularly for tasks I'm afraid to tackle. I'll identify a goal, create a separate chat in ChatGPT, and then say, "I want to work for 30 minutes every day; I want you to guide me in every step of the process. Be my cheerleader but also a very honest critic."

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

That's it for today!

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See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown

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