Film studios hit by crackdown on using AI to bring dead actors back to the screen

Film studios will require permission to bring stars back from the dead through the use of AI.

A new law has been made by the California Senate that will require studios to ask the late actor's estate before featuring their artificial likeness in their movies.

The crackdown is expected to come into force across the US, and potentially across the rest of the world, once it has been passed by the state's governor Gavin Newsom and will also apply to TV shows, video games and other media.

Film studios do not currently need consent from estates to use AI to replicate deceased performers, although it is often sought, but the new bill would make it a requirement.

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) – the trade union for movie actors – said: "This is another win in our ongoing strategy of enhancing performer protections in a world of generative artificial intelligence."

AI was used in the recent movie 'Alien: Romulus' to bring the late British actor Sir Ian Holm back to life for the role as an android, after he had appeared in the original 'Alien' flick back in 1979.

'Star Wars' also used technological wizardry to include footage of Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in the 2019 film 'The Rise of Skywalker' following her death three years earlier. Her brother had agreed to let her feature in the blockbuster.

Meanwhile, Nicolas Cage expressed fear earlier this year about being "replaced" by artificial intelligence after detailing how he had to be digitally scanned for his role in the 'Spider-Man Noir' series.

Explaining why he had to wind down his interview with The New Yorker magazine, he said: "I have to slip out after this to go get a scan done for the show, and then also for the movie I’m doing after the show. Two scans in one day!"

Asked what that involves, Cage added: "Well, they have to put me in a computer and match my eye color and change - I don’t know.

"They’re just going to steal my body and do whatever they want with it via digital AI God, I hope not AI I’m terrified of that. I’ve been very vocal about it."