{"id":553681,"date":"2026-06-25T15:43:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T15:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/553681\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T15:43:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T15:43:11","slug":"open-letter-alleges-major-studio-demands-children-give-voices-to-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/553681\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Letter Alleges ‘Major Studio’\u00a0Demands Children Give Voices to AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNearly 1,000 actors, talent agents, parents and others have signed an open letter organized by the Agents for Young Performers Association this week condemning contract clauses that mandate children sign their voices over to be used by AI \u2014\u00a0a practice Deadline reported Hasbro<\/a> has done with \u201cPeppa Pig<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe letter from the collection of talent agents, which came out Monday, alleges<\/a> that a \u201cmajor studio who owns the [intellectual property] for an international children\u2019s franchise producing a long running animated television series\u201d\u00a0has demanded child voice actors agree to allow their voices be used by AI to produce \u201ccommercial assets within their franchise.\u201d\u00a0For agents who protest, the letter alleged, the studio has responded with \u201can attitude of \u2018take it or leave it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhere the performer is a child, consent must be treated with the greatest of care,\u201d\u00a0the signatories wrote. \u201cChildren cannot provide fully informed legal consent and a parent or guardian\u2019s approval should never be used as a blanket licence to capture, clone, train, or reuse a child\u2019s voice indefinitely.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur letter addresses the universal issue of companies supporting the use of AI in contracts for minors, clauses that are frequently being contested by agents,\u201d\u00a0the AYPA\u2019s board told Variety in an email, refusing to name the studio in question. \u201cThere should be no question of using child actors in any form of AI, whether film, recorded media or images.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHasbro, which purchased the rights to the \u201cPeppa Pig\u201d\u00a0franchise in 2019, told Variety it was aware of the letter and that the \u201cprotection of child performers is core to who Hasbro is\u201d\u00a0and \u201cpart of our DNA.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs industry standards around AI continue to evolve, we are committed to engaging with this issue in a responsible and transparent manner,\u201d a spokesperson told<\/a> Deadline.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe letter also demanded that children\u2019s voices should be exempt from any clauses surrounding AI use, writing that \u201cno child should have their future professional identity shaped by an AI model created before they were old enough to understand its consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTheir voice should not become a permanent commercial asset before they have the legal and personal capacity to decide for themselves,\u201d the signatories wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPeppa Pig\u201d\u00a0debuted in 2004 and has since become an international phenomenon, with films, albums, merchandise and theme park experiences. The show, which airs on Channel 5 in the U.K. and Nick Jr. in the U.S., installed<\/a> \u201cThe Adventures of Paddington\u201d\u00a0writer Adam Redfern as its showrunner in March.<\/p>\n

An AI version of Peppa Pig already exists \u2014\u00a0in some capacity. <\/p>\n

\n\tDuring Axios\u2019 AI+NY\u00a0summit earlier this month, Hasbro AI Studio CEO Bertie Thomson and ElevenLabs\u2019\u00a0head of partnerships Dustin Blank spoke to an AI demo replica of the famed British cartoon during a conversation about the licensing of several Hasbro characters to the AI audio firm<\/a> for commercial purposes. During the demonstration, the AI \u201cPeppa Pig\u201d said there were \u201cspecial rules to make sure we still sound right, act right and play safely.\u201d (Hasbro said the Axios demo was \u201cin keeping with Hasbro\u2019s commitment to responsible AI use with consent and compensation\u201d\u00a0and that Peppa\u2019s voice was \u201can authorized usage developed specifically for demonstration purposes with the appropriate permissions.)<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was unclear which Peppa actor\u2019s voice was licensed for the replica (Harriette Cox, whose representative did not respond to an immediate request for comment, took over the role last year). ElevenLabs did not respond to an immediate request for comment, but the firm has touted the participation of characters\u2019 original voice actors in the licensing agreement. The AYPA declined to comment on the AI replica of Peppa Pig.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly 1,000 actors, talent agents, parents and others have signed an open letter organized by the Agents for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[261],"tags":[237010,291,289,290,18,81452,19,17,66405,82],"class_list":["post-553681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-agents-of-young-performers-association","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-eire","tag-hasbro","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-peppa-pig","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116811517571859380","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}