Show Notes
Eline Van Der Velden did musical theatre, then got a master's in physics with plans to work in nuclear fusion, then went back to acting, built a BBC award-winning YouTube comedy series, started a production company, and just four years ago converted it into an AI production company called Particle6. That backstory alone would make for a good Marvel backstory. Then, she created Tilly Norwood.
Tilly is a synthetic AI actress, and when Particle6 dropped her into the world, Hollywood reacted in a way it hadn't reacted to digital humans in twenty years of trying — Tupac, Lil Mikayla, Epic's Unreal Engine characters, Magic Leap's Mica, none of them landed the same way. Eline's explanation is simple: Tilly was the first one that looked really real. She arrived at a moment when emotions in the industry were already running high, and she became the lightning rod for everything people feared AI would do to actors and the creative workforce.
The conversation goes deep on what it actually takes to build a synthetic performer, where the IP and copyright lines are, why Eline built clear internal AI ethics policy for Particle6, and why Tilly wasn't modelled on any existing actor by design.
The episode opens with AWE wrap-up from Charlie, Ted, and Rony — Snap Spectacles at $2,200, the gray zone problem that has haunted every headset since HoloLens, Project Aura from XREAL finally impressing Charlie, Cosm getting $100 million from Sony, and why Rony thinks building XR has cost more money than going to space.
Note: Charlie's audio dropped near the end of the episode, so Ted and Rony close out the conversation.
Key Moments: [00:01:30] AWE wrap — starting with Snap Spectacles debut at $2,200 [00:08:00] The gray zone — Rony on why AR headsets have cost more to develop than SpaceX, and why consumers won't go to the gray zone [00:12:45] Project Aura from XREAL [00:13:30] Cosm gets $100M from Sony — Is it the next Top Golf or a financial trap? [00:22:00] Introducing Eline Van Der Velden [00:26:00] Why Tilly caused a nuclear reaction; every other digital human got a shrug; Tilly got an industry meltdown [00:45:00] The IP and copyright question & Particle6's internal AI ethics policy [00:57:00] AI is replacing the entire international dubbing workforce in real time [00:59:30] The case for AI Animation image rehab & name change Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Ted and Charlie open with a news roundup covering Colossal Biosciences’ real-world take on a Snow Crash robotic companion, a secretly recorded OpenAI meeting, and the wave of tech billionaires suddenly pledging away chunks of their fortunes. From there they dig into Robert Downey Jr. joining Snap, the relaunch of VR fitness app Supernatural, and why training and simulation keep proving to be VR’s most durable use case.
Ted and Charlie open with a quieter AI news week, giving them room to dig into XR hardware, including hands-on impressions of two new smart glasses, a Norway story on camera glasses restrictions, the shutdown of the XR Association, backlash over Meta’s Muse app, and a tour through AI’s fast-moving film scene.
Charlie, Ted, and Rony open on the week's AI political theater, from the sudden rebrand of AI to "superintelligence" to Dario Amodei's uncomfortable White House appearance. From there, the conversation covers AMD's acquisition of Fei-Fei Li's World Labs, the curious divergence between OpenAI's and Anthropic's paths toward going public, and Rony's read on why liability risk may be the real story behind both. They also dig into Nvidia's push to regulate AI safety at the chip level, a stranger-than-fiction report about Anthropic bringing religious leaders in to discuss whether Claude might be conscious, OpenAI's new companion AI "Dots," and a candid look at where consumer VR actually stands right now.
Cortney Harding steps in as guest co-host this week, joining Charlie to unpack a genuinely strong Meta Connect, new occluded VR glasses aimed squarely at the Vision Pro, a camera-free Ray-Ban, and Muse AI's surprise climb to the top of the app stores. From there, the conversation turns to Disney's newly created CTO role, the quiet fate of its big-money bets on Epic Games and Sora, and Jeffrey Katzenberg's open letter arguing entertainment has always been a technology business. They close out the news with a sharp exchange on Amazon's push into drone delivery and a pointed critique of DraftKings' use of AI to target its most engaged, and most vulnerable, customers.
Charlie and Rony open with Charlie's hands-on take on Snap's $2,200 Specs launch and Rony's theory on how big tech companies let smaller players pioneer risky new hardware first. From there, the conversation turns to a tense week in AI safety, sparked by Dario Amodei's call for frontier labs to slow down, and a sharp debate over whether the industry's talk of needing regulation is really about something else entirely. They close out the news with a look at how China is approaching AI development differently than the West, plus a genuinely stunning breakthrough in brain-computer interfaces.