Nearly 1,000 actors, talent agents, parents and others have signed an open letter organized by the Agents for Young Performers Association this week condemning contract clauses that mandate children sign their voices over to be used by AI — a practice Deadline reported Hasbro has done with “Peppa Pig.”
The letter from the collection of talent agents, which came out Monday, alleges that a “major studio who owns the [intellectual property] for an international children’s franchise producing a long running animated television series” has demanded child voice actors agree to allow their voices be used by AI to produce “commercial assets within their franchise.” For agents who protest, the letter alleged, the studio has responded with “an attitude of ‘take it or leave it.’”
“Where the performer is a child, consent must be treated with the greatest of care,” the signatories wrote. “Children cannot provide fully informed legal consent and a parent or guardian’s approval should never be used as a blanket licence to capture, clone, train, or reuse a child’s voice indefinitely.”
“Our letter addresses the universal issue of companies supporting the use of AI in contracts for minors, clauses that are frequently being contested by agents,” the AYPA’s board told Variety in an email, refusing to name the studio in question. “There should be no question of using child actors in any form of AI, whether film, recorded media or images.”
