Child actors fight AI voice clauses in Hollywood contract battle

Nearly 1,000 actors, talent agents, parents and other advocates signed an open letter demanding that Hollywood strip AI language from child voice contracts. The letter was organized by the Agents for Young Performers Association and targeted clauses that would require child voice actors to permit AI use of their performances.

The letter said a major studio with the intellectual property for an international children’s franchise demanded that child actors agree to let their voices be used in AI-generated commercial assets tied to the brand. When agents pushed back, the studio’s response was described as a blunt “take it or leave it.” The signatories argued that children cannot give fully informed legal consent and that no parent or guardian should be allowed to grant a blanket, indefinite license for a child’s voice to be captured, cloned, trained or reused forever.

The dispute centered on Peppa Pig, the long-running animated franchise that Hasbro bought in 2019. Hasbro was said to be aware of the letter and to have stressed that protecting child performers is central to its identity. The company’s position has been pulled into a broader debate over whether a child’s voice can be treated like licensable data, especially when AI systems can reproduce speech, tone and persona with increasing fidelity.

The fight lands inside a labor system already adapting to synthetic performance. SAG-AFTRA’s 2024 TV and theatrical agreement included AI-related language and recurring meetings with producers over the issue. Later that year, the union also announced an agreement with Narrativ that allowed members to license digital voice replicas for audio ads, a sign that voice AI has already moved from theory into negotiated compensation and contract language.

Outside Hollywood, child-safety groups have been warning that the rules are lagging. UNICEF’s updated AI-and-children guidance says rapid advances in generative AI have widened a governance gap for children’s rights, and a November 2025 joint statement urged governments, companies and institutions to adopt a child-rights-based approach. In January 2026, UN News warned that AI harms to children, including deepfakes and grooming risks, were escalating.

Hasbro’s own AI push has sharpened the stakes. The company has also partnered with ElevenLabs to license AI voices for characters and brands including Transformers, Monopoly, Clue and Mr. Potato Head, underscoring how quickly synthetic voice work is becoming a commercial business even as child performers are asked to sign away rights that could shape their careers for years.