Actors Fear AI ‘Data Grab’ as Scans Become Standard on Film Sets
Performers on television and movie sets are increasingly subjected to complete digital scans, raising concerns about the use of their likenesses in the age of artificial intelligence. The practise, frequently enough occurring with little warning, has sparked anxieties about job security and the potential for exploitation as studios explore “AI doubles” and even fully synthetic “AI actors.”
The unease stems from a lack of clarity surrounding the rights to biometric data collected during these scans. As one veteran actor,olivia Williams,explained,”It happens without warning.” Williams, whose career spans roles in films like The Sixth Sense and Dune: Prophecy, added that she has been scanned “more times than I care to remember.”
The process typically unfolds with a seemingly innocuous request from an assistant director. “You are on set. You are in costume,” Williams described. “A kind assistant director…says that the VFX [visual effects] team are in today – and just after you finish the scene, could you pop over to the VFX bus? And off you go.”
Actors, often prioritizing collaboration and fearing repercussions, frequently comply despite reservations. “Actors are, by and large, people pleasers,” Williams stated. “to have a standoff about scanning…annihilates your creativity, engenders fear that you will never work again, that your a
“If you don’t have your usual crowd of 100, 200 or 500 SAs on a big production, then you also don’t need the assistant directors that look after them, and you don’t need the hair and makeup people,” Watts explained. “There’s a whole range of jobs there that AI effectively puts at risk.”
A dancer, speaking anonymously due to concerns about potential professional repercussions, echoed these fears, describing the pressure to submit to scans even during grueling filming schedules. “You wonder, have we all done ourselves out of a job?” they said. “It makes you feel a bit of a fool.”
Legal experts say the current landscape is fraught with uncertainty. Alex Lawrence-Archer, a data rights lawyer with the firm AWO, explained that performers are hampered by “a morass of complicated, overlapping laws.” He emphasized the need for clearer agreements before production begins, rather than attempting to reclaim data afterward.
“Contracts are often quite poorly drafted,” Lawrence-Archer said. “They’re really not designed with these kinds of technologies in mind. What you have is kind of a vacuum of uncertainty. In that vacuum, AI developers and studios are doing as much as they can get away with.” He added that the focus should be on future data usage, ensuring actors have control over how their likenesses are used for training AI models.
There are early signs of resistance. On one recent shoot, performers successfully negotiated an addendum to their contracts, preventing the use of digital scans for purposes beyond the current production without their written consent.
However, the battle for control is far from over. The source of the data used to train AI models remains largely unknown, and concerns persist that actors are being compensated – or even pressured to withdraw data access requests – to silence their objections. Lawrence-Archer noted that some actors have been “paid off by AI companies to withdraw those requests.”
The potential for AI to either diminish or enhance the creative process remains uncertain. Theo Morton, a professional stunt performer and member of the British Stunt Register, acknowledged that “the technology could conceivably be used in a reductionist way that drastically reduces the need for human performers, or it could be used to benefit creativity.”
Despite this potential,Williams expressed pessimism about the industry’s trajectory. “We need to be building a world in which the human creativity, connection and performance of actors carries on being valued,” she said.”If we focus only on legal and compensation questions, there’s a risk that you end up with actors becoming data gig workers, rather than the creative performers they are.”
