By Arnold Peter*
Hollywood has always been a place where imagination challenges the boundaries of reality. From the earliest motion pictures to computer-generated imagery, the entertainment industry has embraced technologies that allow filmmakers to accomplish what once seemed impossible. But artificial intelligence presents a fundamentally different challenge. For the first time, technology can convincingly recreate not merely an actor’s appearance, but potentially an entire performance, including the voice, expressions, movements, and distinctive qualities that define an individual’s artistic identity. This raises a question that goes well beyond entertainment: When technology can replicate human creativity, who controls the resulting performance, and what becomes of the person whose identity made it possible?
Victor Li explores these questions in his excellent October 1, 2026, ABA Journal article, “Lights, Camera, AI: Technology Is Changing
How Hollywood Replaces Actors—and Testing the Limits of Publicity Law.” Through historical examples, legal analysis, and interviews with leading scholars and practitioners, Li demonstrates that Hollywood’s current confrontation with AI is the culmination of decades of technological experimentation. His article also reveals why the existing legal framework may be increasingly inadequate to address the challenges ahead. As someone who has spent much of his legal career representing participants in the entertainment industry, I believe we are witnessing a transformation that requires us to reconsider the relationship between technology, creativity, economic opportunity, and human dignity.
Actors and Artists: From Body Doubles to Digital Immortality
One of the most compelling aspects of Li’s article is his historical examination of how Hollywood has recreated performers long before generative AI existed. When actor Shemp Howard died in 1955, the Three Stooges completed their remaining contractual obligations using stand-ins, archived footage, and creative camera angles. Decades later, filmmakers employed increasingly sophisticated techniques to complete productions involving deceased or unavailable performers.
The controversy surrounding Crispin Glover’s likeness in Back to the Future Part II illustrates how these technological practices eventually collided with individual rights. After Glover declined to appear in the sequel, filmmakers used a substitute actor with prosthetics designed to resemble him, along with footage from the original film. Glover sued Universal Pictures, alleging unauthorized exploitation of his likeness, and the dispute ultimately settled. As Li explains, the controversy helped influence industry protections governing the recreation of performers’ identities. Yet those protections developed when imitation required substantial human participation and technical resources.
Today, generative AI dramatically reduces those barriers. A digital replica may reproduce a performer who is unavailable, unwilling to participate, or deceased. The technology can also generate entirely new scenes, dialogue, and performances that the individual never actually delivered. Consider the recent use of AI to recreate the late Val Kilmer for the forthcoming film As Deep as the Grave, discussed in Li’s article. Kilmer had previously embraced AI-assisted voice technology, demonstrating that digital recreation can serve legitimate artistic purposes when consistent with a performer’s wishes. The distinction between consensual technological assistance and unauthorized exploitation is critical. The central legal issue should not be whether AI is used, but who authorizes its use, under what conditions, and with what continuing protections.
The Right of Publicity Meets Generative AI
The right of publicity traditionally protects individuals against unauthorized commercial exploitation of their identity, including their name, likeness, and recognizable persona. Yet generative AI challenges the assumptions upon which these protections were developed. Li’s article identifies a central problem: American publicity law remains largely a patchwork of state statutes and common-law doctrines. California provides significant protections, including postmortem publicity rights, but those protections are neither uniform nor unlimited.
The proposed federal NO FAKES Act seeks to establish more consistent protections against unauthorized digital replicas. Its supporters argue that individuals should retain meaningful control over the commercial exploitation of their voices and likenesses. Critics, including civil liberties organizations, warn that overly broad restrictions could threaten satire, political commentary, documentary filmmaking, and constitutionally protected expression. Both concerns deserve serious consideration. A law that permits unrestricted digital impersonation risks turning an individual’s identity into an exploitable commodity. Conversely, a law that allows powerful individuals to suppress criticism merely because a parody resembles them threatens the First Amendment.
The solution requires carefully distinguishing commercial substitution from protected expression. An AI-generated performance designed to replace an actor in a commercial production raises different considerations from an obvious parody, news report, or historical documentary. Consent, compensation, transparency, and clearly defined exceptions should form the foundation of any comprehensive regulatory framework.
Human Creativity Cannot Be Reduced to Data
Perhaps the most important insight in Li’s article comes from Cornell Law professor James Grimmelmann, who questions whether AI can truly replicate the distinctive spontaneity of human performance. Grimmelmann invokes Gene Wilder’s memorable entrance in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, where the actor unexpectedly transformed an apparently frail walk into an athletic tumble. That moment was not simply a collection of movements. It reflected human intuition, humor, timing, and artistic judgement.
This distinction matters because generative AI operates by identifying and reproducing patterns, while human creativity emerges from experience, emotion, intention, and the unpredictable interaction between performer and audience. AI may eventually simulate many characteristics of extraordinary performances. But simulation should not automatically be confused with authorship, nor should technological capability determine the legal or ethical legitimacy of recreating an individual’s work.
The entertainment industry must therefore confront a question that copyright and publicity doctrines do not fully resolve: Should a performer’s creative identity be treated merely as a transferable commercial asset, or does it retain a personal dimension deserving independent protection? In my view, the answer must recognize both economic rights and human dignity.
A Governor, a President, and a Pope: Three Perspectives on AI
In a previous article on artificial intelligence, I have explored an unusual convergence among three institutions: California’s governor, the American presidency, and the Catholic Church.
Although their approaches differ considerably, each is confronting the same underlying question: How can society benefit from AI without surrendering essential human judgement and responsibility?
California has increasingly emphasized protections against the harmful consequences of automated decision-making, particularly in employment. Federal policymakers have approached AI through competing priorities involving innovation, competitiveness, national standards, and regulatory restraint. The Catholic Church contributes a complementary moral perspective by emphasizing that technological progress must remain subordinate to human dignity and the common good.
These approaches are particularly relevant to Hollywood. A digital replica may create economic efficiencies and new artistic opportunities, but efficiency alone cannot justify eliminating the rights or agency of the person being replicated. Similarly, an AI system may generate a convincing performance, but the decision to use that performance carries moral and legal responsibilities that cannot be delegated to an algorithm. This is where the debate over AI in entertainment intersects with broader questions concerning employment, judicial decision-making, and the future of professional judgment. Technology can assist human creativity, but it should not become an excuse to disregard the humans who made that creativity possible.
Toward a New Entertainment Industry Framework
Rather than resisting AI categorically, Hollywood should develop a framework that permits innovation while protecting performers, creators, and audiences. Four principles deserve particular attention, each addressing a different dimension of the relationship between technological capability and individual rights.
First, meaningful informed consent. Authorization to create a digital replica should clearly identify the permitted uses, duration, compensation, and whether the replica may be employed in future productions or modified to generate new performances. Consent should be specific enough to ensure that performers understand not only the immediate use of their likeness but also the potential implications of future technological developments.
Second, fair economic participation. When an individual’s identity contributes commercial value, contractual arrangements should address compensation, residuals where applicable, and potential downstream exploitation. The economic benefits of AI should not flow exclusively to those who control the technology while excluding the performers whose identities and creative contributions make its commercial application possible.
Third, transparency and accountability. Studios and producers should establish appropriate disclosure practices and maintain identifiable human responsibility for decisions involving digital performers. Technological sophistication should never become a means of obscuring responsibility for unauthorized uses or avoiding contractual and legal obligations.
Fourth, protection of creative and expressive freedom. Legislation should preserve legitimate parody, commentary, news reporting, and other constitutionally protected uses while providing meaningful remedies for unauthorized commercial exploitation. These protections are essential to ensuring that efforts to safeguard individual identity do not inadvertently suppress the very artistic expression and public discourse that the entertainment industry exists to promote.
These principles would not eliminate every dispute. They would, however, establish a foundation for responsible technological development without assuming that existing contractual practices and legal doctrines can resolve every emerging issue.
The Future of Hollywood Must Remain Human
Li concludes his article by considering whether audiences will ultimately accept AI-generated performers. That is undoubtedly an important commercial question, but it is not the only one. Audiences may embrace digital recreations of beloved performers, particularly when the technology is employed respectfully and with appropriate authorization. They may also reject productions that appear to exploit deceased artists or diminish opportunities for living performers.
Yet the marketplace cannot independently determine every ethical boundary. Some rights deserve protection even when their violation might prove commercially profitable. Hollywood has an extraordinary opportunity to demonstrate how artificial intelligence can expand creative possibilities without sacrificing the people whose talents built the industry. The challenge is not to choose between technological innovation and human creativity, but to establish a legal and ethical framework in which the two can coexist.
Artificial intelligence may someday recreate almost any performance. But the ability to reproduce a human likeness should never be mistaken for the right to own the human identity behind it. That distinction may ultimately determine whether Hollywood’s AI revolution becomes a triumph of creativity or a cautionary tale about technology advancing faster than our commitment to human dignity.
*Arnold P. Peter is the founder and managing partner of the Peter Law Group. He is a prominent attorney specializing in employment law, complex entertainment transactions and litigation, and cross-border India-U.S. legal matters
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