So You Want to Build an A.I. Star?

“That’s not an angle that we have, and he would be fun to work on,” Brown said.

The room unanimously agreed that Rowe, out of the candidates that had been considered, should advance, and that Taylor would reposition Rhea Patel.

Brown asked Valentino to check in on a few existing characters. On a large monitor at the front of the room appeared Ryan Cole, an acerbic tech ***yst with a square jaw and a graying beard, and Oly Bennet, a blue-eyed sports correspondent with glistening biceps.

Everyone paused to admire Lila Walker, a new knitting- and craft-focused persona, created by Brown, who had a chunky wool sweater, long, wavy tresses of red hair, cream-colored skin and a spray of freckles.

“Man, I’m crushing on her,” Taylor said.

“If you want, I can take your picture and put you behind her with a pottery wheel,” Valentino teased, referring to a scene from the movie “Ghost.”

“Yeah, my wife would love that,” Taylor replied dryly.

Ignoring them, Brown asked Valentino to pull up draft images of Walker. A grid of softly lit portraits appeared, including one in which the character looked blissful while collecting seashells on a tide-swept beach.

Brown originally conceived of Walker as an idealized version of her younger self. In the late 1990s and the 2000s, she hosted instructional home cooking and decorating shows, including “Next Door With Katie Brown,” on Lifetime, and “Katie Brown’s Workshop,” on PBS, making her a kind of early influencer. Inception Point’s focus on telegenic subject matter gurus reflects her conviction that people crave authority figures who are simultaneously approachable and just out of reach.