LOS ANGELES — For decades, the deal a background actor struck with a studio was simple enough to explain over coffee: show up, stand in the right spot, get paid for the day. Now that deal comes with a question nobody used to have to ask. What happens to my face after I leave the set?
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California lawmakers spent 2024 trying to answer it. Two bills signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that fall, taking effect Jan. 1, 2025, now govern how film and television companies can use so-called digital replicas, the AI-generated recreations of a performer's voice, face or movements built from scans, archival footage or a few hours in a motion-capture suit.
One law requires that any contract involving the creation of a digital replica spell out, in reasonably specific terms, how that replica will be used, and it requires performers to have either union representation or independent legal counsel before signing away those rights. The other extends protections to performers who are no longer alive, requiring consent from an estate before a deceased actor's likeness can be digitally recreated for a new movie, show, video game or album.
Neither law bans the technology. Both assume it's here to stay and try to make sure the person whose face or voice is being reused has some say in the matter, and gets paid for it.
The legislation followed directly from the labor unrest that shut down Hollywood for much of 2023. When SAG-AFTRA walked out that summer, artificial intelligence sat near the top of the grievance list, right alongside streaming residuals. Actors and background performers described being asked, in some cases, to sign away scan rights under vague language about "advertising and promotional use" — language that could theoretically stretch to cover an AI-generated performance years later, in a project the performer never agreed to and might never see a dime from.
The union's endgame contract with the major studios, ratified that November, built in guardrails on AI consent and compensation. But contract language only binds the companies that signed it. California's new statutes extend the same basic principle into state law, applying to productions and negotiations far beyond the studios that came to terms with SAG-AFTRA.
The stakes are clearest at the margins of the industry, where leverage is thinnest. A featured player with a recognizable face and an agent can negotiate hard over digital rights. A background actor booked for a single day of crowd work generally cannot. Scanning technology can now capture a performer's likeness in far greater detail than old-fashioned photography, and once that data exists, it can theoretically be reused indefinitely, in projects that have nothing to do with the one the actor was hired for.
Animation and video game performers raised similar concerns during the SAG-AFTRA video game strike that ran separately from the film and TV walkout. Voice actors described the unease of recording lines for a character, only to wonder whether a studio could later generate new dialogue in their voice without booking them again.
The deceased-performer statute addresses a different but related anxiety, one that predates generative AI but has been sharpened by it.