The DGA's commercial contract carries no AI clause

The shot

The Directors Guild of America's own Contracts section, as retrieved 16 September 2026, states that its agreements 'include the Basic Agreement (BA) which covers projects shot on film' under a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, and separately 'includes contracts for and/or information pertaining to Commercials, Documentaries, Experimental Projects, Industrial Films, Internet/Mobile Projects, Low Budget Films, Reality Television' and various network deals. The guild's own Agreements contact listing names a dedicated staff contact for Documentary separate from the contacts handling Commercials in Los Angeles and New York, confirming these are administered as distinct contract lines rather than riders on the Basic Agreement already covered on this site.

What the documents show

The guild's published National Commercial Agreement table of contents runs to roughly ninety-five numbered pages of clauses on staffing, minimum salaries and working conditions, including a side letter titled 'Government, Non-Scripted, Documentary and Classroom Productions', meaning non-fiction and documentary-style commissions are addressed inside this same agreement rather than under a freestanding documentary contract text this entry could locate. As retrieved 16 September 2026, that table of contents lists no numbered clause addressing artificial intelligence, digital replicas or generative tools, in contrast to the AI-specific language the DGA negotiated into its 2023 Basic Agreement, already covered on this site. A table of contents is not proof that no such text exists anywhere in the document's body, but the absence of a numbered section is a reasonable signal given how consistently this contract numbers even narrow provisions.

The workflow

A commercial production signing this agreement works from a document built around production governed by the Association of Independent Commercial Producers: preparation time, staffing minimums for assistant directors and unit production managers, and a specific side letter for non-scripted and documentary-style commissions. A director or producer looking for the AI-specific consent or credit language the Basic Agreement carries should not assume it is present here; the guild's own contract text, as published, gives no indication that it is, and only a signatory's own legal counsel or the guild's contracts department can confirm current scope for a specific production.

What the tool does not change

Separate agreement categories exist because commercial, documentary, low-budget and theatrical production carry different economics and staffing patterns, not because one automatically inherits another's negotiated terms. This is an editorial reading of the structure DGA's own site describes: a provision negotiated into one agreement does not extend to a sibling agreement unless the guild's own text says so.

• Which specific DGA agreement, not just 'the DGA contract', governs a given commercial or documentary production?
• Does that agreement's own text, not the Basic Agreement's, contain any AI-specific consent, credit or compensation clause?
• Has the National Commercial Agreement been renegotiated since this 2021-dated text, given AI terms have since appeared elsewhere in DGA agreements?

Until the DGA's own commercial and documentary contract text shows otherwise, the Basic Agreement's 2023 AI provisions should be read as covering the theatrical and television work that agreement addresses, not the separate commercial and documentary lines the guild administers alongside it.