AI by department · Performers and digital likeness
The hardest one. Read this before you consent to anything.
Every other department page is about tools. This one is about you: your face, your voice, your body, captured once and usable for as long as the file exists. We hold a harder line here than anywhere else, because the asset being licensed is a person.
Last checked September 2026. Nothing here is legal advice. If you have been asked to sign something, ask your agent or Equity first.
The record
Where the UK argument has got to, and what is being asked of you.
01
Equity’s case, June 2025
An open letter to Pact, signed by Tamsin Greig, Alan Davies, Emma D’Arcy, Nicola Walker and Wilf Scolding among others, said thousands of performers on Pact–Equity productions had been digitally scanned on set without informed consent. Pact’s answer: “Cast are informed when and why they are being scanned – most commonly for editing purposes.” Both can be true at once, which is the point.
02
The ballot, December 2025
Asked whether they were prepared to refuse to be digitally scanned on set, 99.6 per cent said yes, on a 75.1 per cent turnout of an electorate of 7,732. Indicative, not binding.
03
The benchmark, and where it stands
SAG-AFTRA’s agreement ratified in June 2026 requires consent and an “articulable business reason” before a performer is scanned for a digital replica, bars a replica from replacing a performer during a strike, and adds protections for minors. As at September 2026 no AI agreement between Equity and Pact has been publicly confirmed.
What is actually being asked of you: body and face scanning at a fitting, presented as routine; digital doubles for stunts and crowd, the strongest case here; de-ageing, face replacement and visual dubbing; voice cloning, from fixing one word to generating lines never performed; and synthetic crowd built from scans of background artists paid for one day. Section 182(1) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 does not clearly reach synthetic reproduction, so in the UK your stronger route is data protection law and the right to erasure. Biometric data used to identify you is special category data.
Before you agree to a scan
You are entitled to answers before you sign.
Ask: for which production, for how long, for exactly which uses, can it be transferred or sold with the production, is there payment for reuse, can consent be withdrawn, and what happens to the data if the production is cancelled. A clause answering “any purpose, in perpetuity, in all media now known or hereafter devised” has answered none of them. Ask for the scanning clause before the scanning day, not on it.
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What to do now
Whatever your position on the technology.
Ask for the scanning clause in advance
Before the fitting day, in writing. A production that will not send it in advance has told you something
Do this
Keep your own scan register
Every production, every date, what was captured, on what terms and who holds the data
Do this
Know which thing you are being asked for
A digital double of you doing something you agreed to is not a synthetic performer assembled from you and others. The paperwork often blurs them
Do this
Our own position on programmes
No participant on a Futures in Film programme is scanned without specific, informed, time-limited written consent naming the production and the uses. Nobody under 18 is on a Futures in Film programme.
Our position
