A synthetic performer is not the same as a digital replica

The shot

SAG-AFTRA's television, theatrical, and streaming contracts carry a set of contract bulletins that define and separate two artificial-intelligence terms: "digital replica" and "synthetic performer." The union's own artificial intelligence resources page, retrieved 16 September 2026, hosts both bulletins alongside separately signed AI-vendor agreements such as Replica Studios and Ethovox. The distinction refines the union's 2023 agreement language.

What the documents show

The bulletin on digital replicas defines three kinds under the current agreements, an "employment-based digital replica" created in connection with a specific production, an "independently created digital replica" a performer owns and licenses separately, and a background-actor replica, and states a producer "must get your consent before" using one, required again "each time they want to use your digital replica in a different project." A separate bulletin on synthetic performers draws the boundary the other way: a synthetic performer "must be wholly synthetic and not based on an actual performer," and if a digitally created character is "created to resemble an actual performer, it is a digital replica," so digital-replica consent terms apply instead. Both are the union's own contract explanations, not certified Basic Agreement text.

The workflow

Under the digital-replica bulletin, a producer scanning a performer must give at least 48 hours' notice, "clear and conspicuous," rather than "consent buried in the fine print" of a hiring contract. Under the synthetic-performer bulletin, before a studio can use a wholly synthetic character built from a performer's name or facial features fed into a generative-AI prompt, it "will have to provide notice to the union and an opportunity to bargain" over what the bulletin calls "consideration," a term it says can include but is not limited to pay. Both route through the union rather than resolving between a studio and a performer alone.

What the tool does not change

The digital-replica bulletin states the agreement "does not include language relating to the storage of digital replicas," leaving that gap to "a myriad of state laws," a limit the union says it is still negotiating to close. The synthetic-performer bulletin sets no specific compensation figure, deferring to case-by-case bargaining. Neither document claims the union can independently verify when an AI system was trained or prompted on a performer's features; both rely on the employer's own notice and consent duty.

• Does a given AI-driven character meet the bulletin's test for a synthetic performer, or does it resemble an actual performer closely enough to require digital-replica consent instead?
• Has the performer received the 48-hour scan notice the digital-replica bulletin describes, separate from a buried contract clause?
• Where the contract is silent on data storage, what does the production's own or the applicable state's privacy policy require?

Read together, SAG-AFTRA's own current bulletins draw a working line between a replica of a real performer and a wholly invented synthetic character, and attach different consent and bargaining obligations to each. The bulletins are the union's explanatory materials for its television and theatrical contracts, current as retrieved in September 2026, and they say plainly where the underlying agreement leaves questions, storage security chief among them, to state law rather than to contract text.