AI likeness deals: who signs them and what the rules allow

Actors are selling the rights to their own faces and voices, and the deals are being signed while the rules that govern them are still being argued over.

The argument has been loud this month. Catherine Zeta-Jones told the Associated Press she would rather watch real people than AI performers, Nicolas Cage says he refused an AI waiver on an Amazon series, and Mark Wahlberg said he would be open to a replica of himself if his children controlled it. The deals on the other side of the argument are already public: Sunny Hostin's license to the AI studio Fountain 0, and the cast Higgsfield assembled from licensed likenesses for the film Cully Hill Boys.

What a likeness license actually covers

Hostin, a co-host of The View, licensed her name and likeness to Fountain 0, Variety reported in late August 2026. The agreement lets the company make adaptations of her novels, and those productions may include her own image. Fountain 0 said Hostin keeps strict control over how that image is used; Ash Koosha, the company's chief executive, said the agreement lets her decide which of her books becomes a film and what roles her image can appear in.

Fountain 0's earlier work is the template. Variety reported that the studio made the AI-generated docudrama Dreams of Violets and the Odyssey adaptation Odysseus: The Fall, with Koosha's own likeness playing the Greek hero in the second.

Hostin explained the decision on the September 11, 2026 episode of The View, as People reported. She said she had spent six years trying to get her novels onto screen, and called the gatekeeping around Black and Brown creative content in Hollywood insane. Asked what any of that had to do with AI, she said the technology cuts out the gatekeeping.

The cast Higgsfield built out of likenesses

Higgsfield's Cully Hill Boys models its cast on the streamer N3on, UFC fighter Israel Adesanya, actor and UFC fighter Quinton "Rampage" Jackson and basketball influencer Matt Kiatipis, Variety reported on August 5, 2026. Variety describes the film as aiming to be the first AI-generated production built on legally licensed celebrity likenesses, and reports that Higgsfield made it to show studios what its Cinema Studio platform can do rather than for a general release.

The work behind the license was small. N3on, whose real name is Mikyle Rafiq, told Variety the part took a two-minute voice recording and some photographs, and described the fee as good for very little work. He said he was paid for a likeness that would otherwise have required him to wake at 6 a.m. on a film set between daily streams.

What the union contract already requires

SAG-AFTRA's 2026 TV/Theatrical contracts, ratified on June 4, 2026 by 91.42% to 8.58%, carry a line in the union's own summary of the agreement: "Producers agree to a principle strongly favoring human performances."

Two provisions sit under that principle. A producer must have an articulable business reason before scanning a performer to build a digital replica, and a producer must bargain with the union before a synthetic performer is used in a human role. The terms bind producers who have signed the union's agreements, which is why they constrain studios rather than the individual deals actors sign on their own.

Who has said no, and who is unsure

Zeta-Jones gave her answer in an AP interview published October 9, 2026, alongside her Kill Jackie co-star Daniel Ings. "There's so many actors already, who have given themselves over to an AI company, and that's everyone's choice," she said. "But I like going to the theater and seeing real people talk." She named no company, and did not ask other performers to turn the deals down.

Cage said at New York Comic Con on October 10, 2026 that he refused to sign the AI waiver requested for the Amazon series Spider-Noir. The request is Cage's account, and Amazon has not commented on it. "I'm probably not going to be working with that studio again, but that's OK," he said, per the Los Angeles Times, which reported that Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. SLOP TV covered the panel in October.

Wahlberg, speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt, put himself in the middle. He said he had not visited CAA Vault, the Creative Artists Agency facility that scans performers' bodies, faces, movements and voices to build AI replicas, and that he would be interested because it would be cool if his children or grandchildren were in charge of his likeness. He also said he is all for AI that enhances a film, and against AI that replaces the actors in one. SLOP TV covered those remarks in October.

What is still unsettled

Japan's actors union, a cooperative of about 2,600 actors and voice actors, published its first guidelines on AI voice use at a press conference on October 15, 2026. The guidelines require a performer's permission at every stage, payment when a generated voice is used, fresh approval for each language an AI dub is made in, and an estate's permission before a dead performer's voice is recreated. The union says Japan has no law that protects a voice, which is why it is pressing the government to legislate. SLOP TV reported the guidelines when they were published.

Those guidelines are a private standard, not a law, and the SAG-AFTRA terms bind producers who have signed the union's agreements. Neither route sets a price for a likeness license, so deals like Hostin's and the Cully Hill Boys cast are negotiated performer by performer.

Fountain 0 has not said which of Hostin's novels it will adapt first. Higgsfield built Cully Hill Boys as a sales tool for its Cinema Studio platform, which makes the film's reception the next test of whether a licensed cast becomes a normal line item in a production budget.

The full AP interview with Zeta-Jones and her Kill Jackie co-star Daniel Ings is on AP's site.