A vertical actor's AI clause binds the producer. The ad, the script and the lookalike sit outside it

Haley Lohrli was dressed when she shot her microdrama. In the ads that sold it, she was in her underwear. When she complained, she was told there were "some 300 variations of the ad out there," Business Insider reported on 7 May. She now asks for AI clauses in her contracts.

Maddie Grove is a talent manager. She has about 15 vertical actors at LEWK Management. "Some actors are now negotiating AI language into their contracts," The Hollywood Reporter wrote on 10 September, quoting her. Since June, she has seen platforms breach actors' contracts four times over AI.

I read the contract that gives a vertical actor such a clause, and the union rules it points to. Three uses of an actor's work fall outside them.

A smaller market to negotiate in

Grove told THR that her agency went from 15 to 20 shows casting a day to "maybe four" after June. Kylie Karson, an actor and co-founder of the platform Chera TV, said she now gets two vertical auditions a week. Last year it was five to 15.

(We quoted the same THR figures in our interview with Olumide Gbenro, whose studio sells AI doubles.)

The permit data does not show the drop yet. FilmLA has no vertical category. Online content lands in its "Other" category. That category rose 10% year on year in the second quarter, to 2,118 shoot days. That quarter ends on 30 June, the month Grove dates the fall from. For now the decline rests on testimony.

What the clause covers

SAG-AFTRA is the American actors' union. In October 2025 it launched a contract for independent producers of vertical series, capped at $300,000 a program. Its sample agreement is public. The AI rules sit in Article 12.

A "fully synthetic performer" cannot replace a human role "without first bargaining with and obtaining the consent of SAG-AFTRA." A digital replica, the copy of an actor built from the shoot, must be deleted within 90 days of the final edit. Footage captured under the contract "shall not be used" for machine learning.

For everything else, Article 12 sends the reader to Section 29 of the union's 2023 film and TV agreement. That section sets the consent rules. Consent must be "clear and conspicuous," in a signed writing, with "a reasonably specific description of the intended use." For a use outside the show the actor was hired for, it cannot be taken at the time of employment.

The union also forbids its members to work on non-union verticals. "Global Rule One applies to Vertical productions," its contract bulletin says. So a member who shoots a vertical works under a union contract or breaks a union rule.

(The union's 2026 deal with the studios added a "principle strongly favoring human performances." Its referendum booklet mentions verticals only for studio members of the AMPTP, the producers' alliance. The independent contract still points to the 2023 text. That is my reading of the two documents.)

Outside it: the ad

"Actors' contracts are often signed with a show's producer, who then sells the film to an app. It's the app that promotes the vertical on social media," Business Insider wrote.

The SAG-AFTRA contract binds the first link, the producer. Article 7.B says consent for "use in commercials must be obtained, at the time of use, in writing and separately from the Performer's employment contract." Promotion of the program itself is exempt. That includes "releasing a few episodes at no charge on social media." Article 1 "specifically excludes" commercials from the contract's scope. And Article 12 does not require the producer "to destroy any commercials produced that contain performances generated by the Digital Replica."

I looked for the contract's definition of "commercials." There isn't one.

Grove described the breaches she has seen. Platforms hire a third-party ad company. It has no contract with the actors. That company takes "many creative liberties that are overtly sexual, rage-baiting, clickbaity," she told THR. Three actors told Business Insider they got the same answer when they complained to the apps: a third party made the ad. When Tess Dinerstein wrote to ReelShort's CEO about an ad for How to Tame a Silver Fox, she was told it came from "the Beijing team." The ad came down.

The ad platforms have their own rules. TikTok rejects or restricts an ad when it finds undisclosed AI, and removes the likeness of a private person used without permission "when we become aware."

Scripts sold to a company outside the union

Dinerstein also writes. In 2025 she sold a pirate microdrama script to DramaBox. She told an executive she would not like it made with AI. The executive left. The show came out in AI, THR reported. Dinerstein "acknowledges that DramaBox owns the full rights to the script." The writers' union covers verticals. Writing work on them "is generally covered by the MBA under the classification of 'original new media,'" the Writers Guild of America says. The MBA is the guild's master contract. The same page adds that work for a company that has not signed it "is not protected by any MBA terms or Guild enforcement."

Actors have met the same limit with series they shot. In July, Business Insider found live-action series remade with AI leads. Ashley BeLoat asked MoboReels, through her manager, to take the AI version down or to pay her. Brittany Marsicek, remade on the same app, "didn't have any AI protections in her contracts," which gave the producer "broad editing permissions." "You don't think that their editing includes completely changing your likeness," she said. BeLoat had no response.

Evan Gambardella was paid $5,000 for a GoodShort series. He saw an AI character he believed was based on him. He could not prove it. GoodShort told Business Insider it "doesn't support the unauthorized use of an actor's image, voice, or identity."

A face that matches no one

The union's 2023 text draws the line that matters here. A "Synthetic Performer" looks like a natural performer "who is not recognizable as any identifiable natural performer." For that, the producer owes the union notice and "an opportunity to bargain in good faith." The actor's own consent enters in one case: a facial feature "recognizable as that of a specific natural performer through the use of such identified natural performer's name" in the prompt.

THR noted that characters in DramaWave's The Rise of the Lycan Queen and DramaBox's Deny Me, Dragon King look a lot like Henry Cavill in The Witcher. (THR asked Cavill's representatives, DramaWave and DramaBox for comment. None was reported.)

State law draws a similar line. California's AB 2602 voids a digital-replica clause in some contracts, for performances fixed since 1 January 2025. A replica there is "readily identifiable as the voice or visual likeness of an individual." New York's General Obligations Law § 5-302 defines a replica as one that a layperson could not readily tell from the person.

One New York law covers a performer who resembles nobody, in advertising only. Since June, an ad with a "synthetic performer" must say so, according to a client alert by the law firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp. Fines start at $1,000. The firm notes an exemption for promoting an expressive work, such as a series.

My view: of the three, the lookalike is the hardest to write into a contract. Every text I read tests for recognition, and a lookalike is built to stay just under it.

Where a court has ruled

China has a judgment. In March, the Beijing Internet Court (北京互联网法院, Běijīng Hùliánwǎng Fǎyuàn) ruled on a 44-episode drama in which two sequences used an AI face that resembled a known actress, China Youth Online reported. The producer could not reproduce its creation process in court. The court held that recognition does not require an identical image; it is enough that the public or "a specific group" can tell. The broadcaster was liable too. It had not reviewed the drama with reasonable care. Neither side appealed.

The same market has a price list for faces. A one-year portrait license sells for 100 to 200 yuan, Xinhua found in May. A Shanghai casting director told The World of Chinese that an unknown face goes for 500 to 1,500 yuan a project, and that 10,000 yuan buys 50 faces with perpetual rights. Hongguo is ByteDance's free microdrama app. It says it reviewed 15,000 works for improper AI use and acted against 670.

What gets signed anyway

Some actors sign over their face on purpose. Aki Avni licensed his likeness to Shortical for the AI series Inevitable, TheWrap reported in May. "AI is here to stay," he said. He sees it working "alongside cinema and television."

Rights holders negotiate too. The authors who write as Ilona Andrews licensed their Hidden Legacy books to ReelShort. "We have it in writing that ReelShort will be hiring all HUMAN talent for this production," they wrote on 7 October. They also wrote that "none of the major studios will commit to a no-AI clause."

"We chose to fight for traditional filming and human actors because we knew we could get that."