<\/p>\n
No one wants to be in a bad movie\u2014but imagine a movie studio casting you in new movies after you die, without your consent. That may have once seemed something out of a Black Mirror episode, but it\u2019s becoming a real issue, and many think current legal protections don\u2019t go nearly far enough.<\/p>\n
Most Read from Fast Company<\/p>\n
In 2024, the late Ian Holm appeared, in digital form, in Alien: Romulus four years after his death, a move some critics decried as \u201cdigital necromancy.\u201d<\/a> Early this year, producers partnered<\/a> with a British artificial intelligence<\/a> startup to re-create the voice of Alain Dorval, who spent decades dubbing Sylvester Stallone classics like Rocky and Rambo in French. The plan was scrapped after his daughter called the re-created voice, set to appear in 2025\u2019s Armor, \u201cunacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n Of late, unconfirmed reports have surfaced of studio plans for the recently deceased Diane Keaton to be digitally resurrected for a sequel to 2005\u2019s The Family Stone.\u00a0\u201cHer family is fuming,\u201d said one source<\/a>.<\/p>\n As concerning as it is for the estates of deceased actors, the potential for AI resurrection and manipulation is a real concern for working actors due to the rise in contracts that include rights \u201cin perpetuity\u201d to an actor\u2019s likeness.<\/p>\n After the 2023 SAG actors\u2019 strike, actors in the US gained some legal protections<\/a> against post-death AI resurrection\u2014in fact, it\u2019s thought to be one of the key reasons the dispute dragged on for so long. But many countries outside the US, including the UK, do not yet have comparable legal protections via their acting guilds or image rights. Even if legal protections do exist, that doesn\u2019t stop actors from potentially signing away the rights to their image via what\u2019s known as an \u201cin-perpetuity contract.\u201d These types of contracts, if they hold up in court, can grant forever rights to exploit digital images a company has captured of an actor.<\/p>\n Victoria Haneman, a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, says that \u201cin-perpetuity\u201d contracts began appearing in big-budget Hollywood contracts en masse all the way back in 2021. But with the technology improving so rapidly, the issue of consent becomes an increasingly thorny one. She points to how rapper Kanye West is thought to have spent over $1 million in 2020 on a hologram of Robert Kardashian<\/a>, the deceased father of ex-wife Kim Kardashian; by the standards of modern AI deepfakes, it looks robotic and practically amateurish.<\/p>\n \u201cYou do not even know what you do not know with regard to how your image can be used later,\u201d Haneman says. \u201cA lot of actors have signed very broad contracts without really contemplating this possibility. They sign contracts with perpetuity clauses in them, not really understanding how that image can be used later.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, it\u2019s impossible to tell what dead actors might make of AI re-creations of themselves. But many living actors have had less-than-stellar experiences of seeing themselves re-created on screen.<\/p>\n Scott Jacqmein, a Texas-based actor, was paid just $750 in 2024 for the rights to his likeness to be used in AI-generated ads on TikTok<\/a>, according to a contract reviewed by Fast Company. Over the next year, Scott found his own AI likeness was being used to advertise witches for hire<\/a>, as well as to promote home insurance in Spanish (he doesn\u2019t speak Spanish). Scott, whose story was first covered<\/a> by The New York Times, later found his likeness being used on YouTube to promote \u201cmale enhancement\u201d products, a violation of the contract he signed.<\/p>\n Scott moved into professional acting later in life after a decade-long career in nursing. He didn\u2019t have an agent and understood little about the business of the industry. But his issue is not just that his likeness was used in ways that he would not otherwise consent to, but that AI-generated representations simply don\u2019t do good actors justice.<\/p>\n \u201cLooking at the reels that TikTok did, they absolutely missed my spark, my essence, and what I have to bring to any role that is offered to me,\u201d he says. \u201cEven though I\u2019m playing a raging Hulk, I\u2019m going to bring my nuances, my personality, my traits that aren\u2019t necessarily able to be picked up by AI and replicated by AI.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of the issues with actors finding their AI likenesses repurposed beyond what they expected come down to the lack of what are known as \u201cimage rights\u201d\u2014which are different from the protections given to creators by copyright\u2014and can differ by country or state.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the UK, we don\u2019t really have a concept of a right to your face,\u201d says Lillian Edwards, a professor of technology law at Newcastle Law School. \u201cPartly because it would have a really bad impact on freedom of expression. It might stop you taking pictures of groups of people, for example, or putting celebrities into memes.\u201d<\/p>\n If an independent movie director were to create an AI Sean Connery, the use of his likeness would be theoretically legally sound, as there is no postmortem image or \u201cpersonality\u201d right in the UK. Currently, though, she says most companies seek the permission of relatives because of the risk of negative publicity, at least at present.<\/p>\n \u201cThe point is that copyright law is not designed to protect your image but the works you create,\u201d Edwards says. \u201cIt\u2019s meant to incentivize you to create more useful works\u2014whereas your face is something you\u2019re just born with.\u201d<\/p>\n Some countries have passed legislation<\/a> to prevent AI resurrection done without permission of heirs or a will. Some US states protect image and reputation after death up to a point. Denmark passed legislation earlier this year establishing posthumous rights to one\u2019s image, including body and face, for up to 50 years after death.<\/p>\n Joe Ashman, a British actor who has been in Netflix series like Free Rein and The Man Who Fell to Earth, when asked about in-perpetuity contracts, thinks that when he first started out in professional acting at the age of 18, \u201che would have signed anything just to get a job.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, Joe has overwhelming confidence in his agent and management team to handle any negotiations on his behalf, but many forms of AI re-creation would make him extremely uncomfortable, including serious body modification. This means no slimming down, no adding muscle, or even changing hair color.\u00a0 Though he insists that any resurrection would need to be done under the right circumstances, he doesn\u2019t deny financials would be part of his attitude on the topic\u2014providing for your family after death isn\u2019t a bad prospect.<\/p>\n \u201cI love the idea that if things did happen and somebody wants to pay a lot of money to digitally re-enhance me, I could pay for my nephews to go to college.\u201d<\/p>\n Legal experts have differing views on mitigating potential risks this poses to actors. University of Georgia\u2019s Haneman feels that ultimately centralized legislation or action from unions is what is needed\u2014unestablished actors simply don\u2019t have the power to hold their ground against powerful movie studios.<\/p>\n The UK Artificial Intelligence Bill is a proposed piece<\/a> of legislation set to pass sometime in 2026, which will write AI regulation principles into law and establish standards for AI developers and users. But at present it only focuses on the work creatives produce\u2014not their images themselves.<\/p>\n In particular, Haneman thinks that \u201cin-perpetuity contracts\u201d in their current state definitely do not address any future risks posed by AI to actors.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I have the ability\u201d to own an actor\u2019s image in perpetuity, she says, \u201cI\u2019m going to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Awareness of these issues does now seem to be slowly building within the industry, and more established actors are speaking out. Homer Simpson\u2019s voice actor Hank Azaria recently called<\/a> the idea of AI replacing him and his fellow Simpsons voice actors \u201cjust plain wrong.\u201d Meanwhile, Samuel L. Jackson has weighed in on \u201cin perpetuity\u201d and \u201cknown and unknown\u201d clauses in contracts, telling young actors to simply cross them out.<\/a> (Jacqmein\u2019s advice on signing in-perpetuity contracts is similar: \u201cJust don\u2019t\u201d).<\/p>\n The issue may be that law simply always advances slower than technology. Existing laws protecting actors and celebrities evolved over hundreds of years\u2014not 20. The film and TV world is now truly in uncharted territory when it comes to AI resurrection, and it\u2019s unknown if the lawmakers and industry can react quickly enough.<\/p>\n This post originally appeared at fastcompany.com<\/a> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No one wants to be in a bad movie\u2014but imagine a movie studio casting you in new movies after you die, without your consent. That may have once seemed something out of a Black Mirror episode, but it\u2019s becoming a real issue, and many think current legal protections don\u2019t go nearly far enough. Most Read […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2311059,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[447719,392216,447721,399680,24159,447716,447720,352592,352102,447718,447717],"class_list":["post-2311058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-deceased-actors","tag-diane-keaton","tag-digital-images","tag-fast-company","tag-kim-kardashian","tag-legal-protections","tag-likeness","tag-resurrection","tag-robert-kardashian","tag-types-of-contracts","tag-victoria-haneman"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/AI-can-make-actors-immortal\u2014but-not-everyone-wants-to-become.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2311058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2311058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2311058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2311060,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2311058\/revisions\/2311060"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2311059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2311058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2311058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2311058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Signing your likeness away<\/h2>\n
Legal patchwork<\/h2>\n
What can actors do now?<\/h2>\n
Subscribe to get the Fast Company newsletter: http:\/\/fastcompany.com\/newsletters<\/a><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n