SAG-AFTRA's 2023 contract requires consent for digital replicas

The stage

SAG-AFTRA members ratified the 2023 TV/Theatrical Agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in national voting completed Tuesday, 5 December 2023, by a vote of 78.33 percent to 21.67 percent, according to the union's own contracts page. The National Board had approved the tentative deal on 10 November 2023, two days after it was reached on 8 November 2023, following that year's strike. The union's own explainer, Regulating Artificial Intelligence, distributed with the contract summary, sets separate rules for what it labels an Employment-Based Digital Replica and an Independently Created Digital Replica, plus a distinct Background Actor Digital Replica category and rules for generative-AI-driven synthetic performers.

What the documents establish

The contracts page and the AI explainer are SAG-AFTRA's own summaries of contract terms, not the full contract text, and establish what the union states the agreement requires rather than an independent legal analysis. For an employment-based replica, made with the performer's physical participation, producers need consent before creation and before each use, with residuals generally due. For an independently created replica, built from existing material without new physical participation, consent is still required before use, but compensation is described as freely bargained rather than tied automatically to residual formulas. For background-actor replicas, 48 hours' notice is required and replicas cannot be used to avoid engaging background performers or to meet a day's background count. For synthetic performers with no real-person basis, the contracts page states producers must give the union notice and an opportunity to bargain, not that such performers are barred.

The department view

These terms reach beyond the performer directly: any virtual-production or digital-human pipeline that scans, tracks or reconstructs a likeness for later reuse now has a documented consent and notice chain to satisfy, and the union treats creation consent and use consent as two separate checkpoints. The trade-off is administrative rather than technical: productions gain a defined path to license and reuse a digital performance, but must build consent, notice and bargaining steps into scheduling and legal clearance rather than treating a scan or capture session as a one-time technical event.

What to check before you build

This is an editorial checklist, not legal advice. Before building a pipeline that stores or reuses a performer's likeness, confirm which replica category the intended use falls under according to the union's own definitions, verify consent has been documented separately for creation and for each planned use, and check current bargaining-notice obligations for any synthetic performer not based on a real individual, since these terms apply to SAG-AFTRA-covered work specifically, not to all performers universally.

• Does this capture or reuse fall under the employment-based, independently created, or background-actor replica definition in the union's own materials?
• Has consent been obtained separately for creation and for the specific planned use, with the required notice period met?
• If the work involves a synthetic performer with no real-person basis, has the union been notified with an opportunity to bargain?

SAG-AFTRA's own contract materials document a specific, categorized consent regime rather than a blanket ban or a blanket allowance on digital replicas, and that granularity is what a production's legal and virtual-production teams need to plan against.