Actor Hira Tareen knows the AI ‘revolution’ is here and that it’s out to take her job. How does she know this? She almost signed it away herself, but thankfully she read the fine print before entering into an agreement with a production company.
She took to Instagram on Tuesday to warn her fellow actors about the impending threat and how they could easily become obsolete if they didn’t carefully go through every contract they signed.
She said she was reviewing a contract for a drama in March when she noticed a clause giving the production house and the channel ownership of her “digital likeness”. She explained that meant they would have the right to use “everything that I have as a human being, my voice, my face, my gestures… And not just for that project, for anything, forever”.
Tareen said she raised the issue with the Actors’ Collective of Pakistan (ACT) and even they didn’t really know how to respond because it was unprecedented. “We thought it would never happen in Pakistan.”
The actor said others in the industry started receiving the same contracts just weeks later, indicating this isn’t just a one-off thing but a growing trend.
Explaining the potential consequences, Tareen said, “First, they use AI just to make your posters, pretty innocent. Then they use your voice for dubbing. Then they call you in for 10 scenes instead of 20, because now the model is training on your existing likeness and footage that they already have. And then, one day, the model is ready and they don’t need to call you in at all.”
She said this had happened earlier in Hollywood, where industry professionals went on strike in 2023 and shut things down until they got legal protections built into their contracts.
The actor acknowledged Pakistan doesn’t have a union like SAG-AFTRA in Hollywood, and there are already so many issues like payment schedules, working conditions and royalties, that many actors already have enough on their plates.
However, she contended that while one bad clause in a long contract might not be the hill many people are willing to die on, it can potentially end their careers in the long term.
She advised actors to look for the following words in any contracts:
If any such terms are found, she said, actors should “ask questions, contact ACT Pakistan if you need to or consult with a legal attorney”.
“One actor reading the fine print changes nothing. All of us refusing to sign the same clauses in the same agreement changes everything,” Tareen said.
