US entertainment giant Hasbro is reportedly asking child actors on the popular series Peppa Pig to sign over their voices to artificial intelligence under new contract terms. An open letter signed by 1,000 industry professionals condemns the AI contract clause and warns of matters of consent.
American toy conglomerate Hasbro is reportedly embracing the use of AI on the popular British animated children's show Peppa Pig, and concerns have been expressed over one particular contractual stipulation.
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The backlash concerns the reported introduction of a new artificial intelligence clause in contracts for child actors. As Deadline reports, this means requiring young performers to sign over the rights to their voices to AI for “commercial assets within their franchise.”
Technically, this clause could give Hasbro the power to clone child actors’ voices to be recreated via AI technology, to be used in perpetuity for promotional and other purposes.
Organized by the Agents of Young Performers Association (AYPA), almost 1,000 industry professionals have signed an open letter condemning the controversial AI terms on an “international children’s franchise.”
The letter does not directly name Peppa Pig or Hasbro. However, sources told Deadline that the letter is in reference to the company’s hugely popular cartoon show.
“Most recently, a major studio who owns the IP for an international children’s franchise producing a long running animated television series has offered contracts to child voice actors insisting that they agree to the use of AI thus allowing them to use the child’s voice in all commercial assets within their franchise,” the letter reads.
“The refusal to remove this clause with an attitude of ‘take it or leave it’ has led us write this letter to make it clear that this will not be accepted and to bring this matter to the attention of the wider industry.”
The letter warns that “where the performer is a child, consent must be treated with the greatest of care” as “children cannot provide fully informed legal consent and a parent or guardian’s approval should never be used as a blanket license to capture, clone, train, or reuse a child’s voice indefinitely.”
It concludes: “Any agreement involving a child’s voice should be fully exempt from all AI usage. No child should have their future professional identity shaped by an AI model created before they were old enough to understand its consequences. We reject all contracts that require child performers to surrender voice rights indefinitely and without limits."
In a statement to Variety, Hasbro confirmed it was aware of the letter and said that the “protection of child performers is core to who Hasbro is.” They added: “As industry standards around AI continue to evolve, we are committed to engaging with this issue in a responsible and transparent manner.”
Concern continues to grow, especially since AI contract clauses in voiceover work are becoming alarmingly common.
As the open letter states, they can allow for the cloning of actor’s voices, the training of AI learning models, and the generation of artificial audio - as well as potentially allow production companies to sell or license a voice actor’s data to third parties without obtaining consent or paying royalties.
Peppa Pig debuted in the UK in 2004 and quickly became an international hit. Hasbro acquired the entire Peppa Pig brand from Entertainment One in 2019 for a reported $3.8 billion.
