AI contract red flags: the exact phrases to circle before you sign

Last month I wrote about why the AI clause in a performer contract is the one to read first — what the new grants actually do, and why they're structurally different from the old footage clause. That post was the why. This one is the what: the specific phrases, word by word, that should make you slow down, and what each one actually hands over if you sign it as written.

I'm not a lawyer. I spent years before this career writing and reviewing contracts in a different industry, which means I'm good at spotting what a clause does under a hostile reading — but that's pattern recognition, not legal advice. Anything you don't fully understand goes to a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction before you sign. Everything below is the markup I'd do on a friend's draft, not counsel.

One more ground rule: every clause snippet in this post is an illustrative composite. I wrote them to show the shape of the language, the way it tends to be assembled. They are not quotes from any specific studio's paperwork, and I'm naming no studios. The phrasings are realistic because the building blocks are standard — that's exactly why they're worth learning to read.

"In perpetuity" plus "irrevocable" — the combination, not either word

Either word alone is survivable. Together they're the most important two-word pattern in the document.

"Performer hereby grants Producer a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free license to use Performer's likeness…"

"Perpetual" means the grant never expires on its own. "Irrevocable" means you can never take it back. Separately, each leaves an exit: a perpetual-but-revocable grant ends when you revoke it; an irrevocable-but-term-limited grant ends when the term does. Stacked, there is no exit. Whatever follows those words in the sentence, you are agreeing to it for the rest of your life, with no mechanism to change your mind.

For a plain footage grant, perpetual-and-irrevocable is the industry norm and arguably fair — the producer paid for the scene and needs to own it cleanly. The red flag is when that pair sits in front of a likeness grant rather than a footage grant. Footage is a thing that already exists. Your likeness is a thing that can be used to make content that doesn't exist yet. Perpetual-irrevocable over the first is a sale. Over the second, it's a subscription to you that you can never cancel.

"In any media now known or hereafter devised"

This is the oldest phrase on the list, and that's the trap. It predates AI by decades — it was written so a 1990s contract would still cover DVDs, then streaming, then phones. Courts have generally read it broadly, because broad is what it was drafted to be.

"…in any and all media, formats, and technologies now known or hereafter devised, throughout the universe."

(Yes, "throughout the universe" really appears in entertainment boilerplate. The funny part is not the funny part.)

Attached to footage, this clause is mostly fine: the scene can follow technology wherever distribution goes. The problem is when it's attached to a broad likeness or "Materials" grant. A generative model is, on a straight-faced reading, a medium hereafter devised. A clause written before AI existed does post-AI work without a single new word being added. When you see this phrase, don't ask what it meant when it was drafted — ask what it covers now, attached to whatever noun sits in front of it.

I'm not a lawyer, and whether a court would actually stretch the catch-all that far is exactly the kind of question one should answer for your specific contract and state. But you should assume the studio's lawyer will argue it covers everything, because that is what the clause is for.

The definitions section is where the body is buried

The grant clause might look narrow. Then you flip to page two — "Definitions" — and find that the narrow-sounding words were quietly inflated before you got to them.

"'Digital Replica' means any digital simulation, reproduction, or rendering of Performer's image, likeness, voice, or performance, whether generated from the Materials or otherwise."

"'Materials' means the Footage and any data, recordings, scans, measurements, or other information captured or derived in connection with the Production."

Watch what happened. The grant clause later says something mild like "Producer may use the Materials and any Digital Replica for promotional purposes." Read alone, that sounds like trailers and banner ads. Read against the definitions, it says: we can build a synthetic version of you — "or otherwise" means not even limited to what we filmed — and use it to market things.

Other defined terms doing the same job: "Simulated Performance", "Synthetic Reproduction", "Derived Works", "Performance Data". None of them are inherently evil. The red flag is a fat definition feeding a thin-looking grant. Always read the definitions first, then re-read every grant clause with the inflated meanings substituted in. The contract means what the definitions say, not what the grant clause sounds like.

The training-data grant

This one is newer and usually more honest, because it has to name what it's doing:

"Producer may use the Materials to develop, train, test, or improve software, machine learning models, or other technology, whether owned by Producer or by third parties."

Parse the verbs. "Develop, train, or improve technology" means your scenes become a dataset. The output of that training isn't your scene anymore — it's a model, and the model is the producer's property even in jurisdictions that might give you rights over your likeness. The "or by third parties" tail means your footage can train someone else's model, and you will never know whose.

A training grant is not automatically a deal-breaker — there's a world where it's scoped to internal tooling, like automated editing or tagging. But unscoped, it converts a scene fee into a permanent contribution to a product you don't share in. If the clause is staying, the scope has to shrink: internal use only, named purposes, no third parties, no synthetic output depicting you. (Again — not legal advice; a lawyer should draft the actual narrowing language.)

Sublicense and assignment: the clause is only as safe as the worst future owner

This is the red flag almost everyone misses, because it doesn't mention AI at all:

"Producer may sublicense, assign, or transfer its rights under this Agreement, in whole or in part, without notice to or consent of Performer."

Every promise in the contract — every scope limit, every "we'd never actually do that" from a producer you like and trust — is only as durable as this clause allows. If the rights can be sold without your consent, you are not really contracting with the person across the table. You're contracting with whoever buys the catalogue in a fire sale five years from now, and with whoever buys it from them. Studios fold. Catalogues get acquired. The least scrupulous future owner of your contract inherits the broadest reading of every grant in it.

So when you evaluate an AI clause, evaluate it as if it's already owned by a stranger who has never met you and bought your likeness rights by the pound. If the grant is only acceptable because you trust the current producer, the grant is not acceptable. Either the scope has to be safe in hostile hands, or the assignment clause needs a consent requirement — or at minimum, a provision that scope limits and consent terms bind all successors and assigns.

Silence is also a red flag

A contract that never mentions AI is not a contract that forbids it. If the agreement contains a broad likeness grant — perpetual, irrevocable, "any media now known or hereafter devised" — and says nothing about synthetic content, then the AI question hasn't been answered. It's been left to whichever side has better lawyers later. Given the sublicense clause above, that's probably not you.

This matters because most paperwork in circulation right now is pre-AI boilerplate. Nobody maliciously drafted it to cover deepfakes; it just does, by accident of breadth. The fix is cheap: a one-sentence carve-out stating that nothing in the agreement grants the right to create synthetic or AI-generated content depicting the performer without separate written consent. A producer who won't add that sentence is telling you something. I keep a baseline set of free model release and agreement generators on this site partly for this reason — knowing what a clean document looks like is how you notice what a loaded one is missing. If you're heading into your first shoot with another creator, the first-collab paperwork checklist covers the whole stack, not just the AI question.

What good language actually looks like

So that this isn't just a list of monsters — here's the shape of a synthetic-content clause I'd consider fair, written again as an illustrative composite:

"Producer may create digital composites of Performer's likeness solely for [named, specific use — e.g., continuity retouching of the Footage], for a term of [X] years. Producer shall submit any synthetic output depicting Performer for Performer's written approval prior to publication. This grant excludes training of generative models for new content, is non-sublicensable, and may be revoked by Performer on [X] days' written notice as to future uses."

The load-bearing features: a specific use, not a category; a fixed term, not perpetuity; named outputs with re-approval rights before anything synthetic ships; no sublicensing; and revocability going forward. Each one is the mirror image of a red flag above. You won't always get all five. But every one you get converts the clause from "we own a version of you" back toward "we hired you for a defined job." Have a lawyer adapt the actual wording — mine is a sketch of the shape, not drafting you should copy.

Strike, narrow, or walk — the leverage you actually have

I'm a year into this industry, so I won't pretend to know what every negotiation across it looks like. What I do know from years of contract work elsewhere: the side that wrote the draft expects pushback on some of it, and a redline is a normal business document, not an insult. Your realistic moves, roughly in order of how often they succeed:

Narrow. Hardest to refuse, because you're not killing the clause — you're scoping it. Add a term. Name the uses. Strike "or by third parties." Add the successors-bound language. A producer who genuinely wants the rights for a stated purpose can live with a clause that grants exactly that purpose.

Strike. Draw a line through the training grant or the synthetic-content language entirely, initial it, and have the producer initial it too on the executed copy. If they intend never to use the rights, striking costs them nothing. Refusal to strike a clause they "would never use" is information.

Walk. Sometimes the answer is the clause is non-negotiable and the rate doesn't begin to price what's being granted. A perpetual, irrevocable, assignable likeness grant with training rights is not a scene contract — it's a buyout of a piece of your future, and a day rate is the wrong price for it. Walking away from that deal isn't losing a booking. It's declining a sale you never meant to hold.

You won't win every redline, and a performer early in their career has less leverage than the paperwork deserves. But "less leverage" isn't "no leverage," and the clauses above are the ones where spending it matters most. Circle the phrases. Ask the questions. Pay a lawyer for an hour before you sign away forever — it's the cheapest insurance in this business.

— Sly