Equity says it is close to securing AI protections for film and TV actors, including around consent, remuneration and transparency, revealing that talks with PACT, which represents film and TV producers, are now “at an advanced stage”.

The performer union put out its latest statement on AI ahead of the first anniversary of the unveiling of “AI actress” Tilly Norwood at the 2025 Zurich Film Festival, a moment which – it says – “sent shockwaves across the acting community and sharpened our focus on securing explicit industrial protections for performers”.

The union’s General Secretary Paul W Fleming said last week, “Equity’s collective agreements are incredibly powerful vehicles to embed minimum standards across the industries our members work in”.

He went on, “we will ensure that contracts for film and TV work in the UK include mandatory protections regarding AI”, and “ensuring the permission and payment of performers for their voice or likeness is central”.

There are various debates within the creative industries around AI, and how to protect the interests of creators and performers, whose existing work is being used to train generative AI models, which then output content that competes with those same creators and performers.

Some of the debate centres on the obligations of the AI platforms themselves, but there’s also the debate around how studios, producers, labels and publishers will work with the AI companies and use AI in their own output.

When it comes to protecting the rights of creators and performers within the creative industries, that might be achieved through collective bargaining, but also by securing new protections in law.

Equity is hoping to achieve both. Alongside its talks with film and TV producers, it is campaigning for a new personality right in UK law to help performers protect their voice and likeness, a campaign it highlighted at the recent TUC conference.

Fleming also talked about personality rights in his new statement last week, stressing that a new law regulating the use of an individual’s voice and likeness in the context of AI-generated digital replicas is important for everyone, not just his members.

“Alongside protections for performers”, he explained, “Equity wants the government to introduce personality rights to benefit everyone across society. Unauthorised, malicious, and sexualised generative AI digital replicas are a threat to our democracy, decency and wellbeing”.

Personality rights, which don’t currently exist in the UK, “are the answer to this”, he added, “and we strongly urge Andy Burnham’s government to grasp the moment and move swiftly to introduce them”.

Fleming concluded, “if we act collectively as an industry – including casting platforms rejecting AI use which reduces artists’ work, producers committing to human performance and workers standing together to negotiate – AI can serve the creative workforce rather than the other way round”.