Peppa Pig in hot ham water for requiring child voice actors to fork over rights for AI

Created in 2004, Peppa Pig is one of the world’s most popular children’s shows and has been broadcast in more than 180 countries, generating billions of dollars for Hasbro, which acquired the property in 2019. In a statement, Hasbro couldn’t comment on “specific negotiation and contractual arrangements” but contends that “the protection of child performers is core to who Hasbro is, it’s part of our DNA. As industry standards around AI continue to evolve, we are committed to engaging with this issue in a responsible and transparent manner.”

Much of Peppa‘s success goes back to its voice cast, which uses child actors, á la Peanuts, to give the show childlike authenticity. But imagine, just for a second, that Hasbro didn’t use child performers, with their needs and guardians and rights to worry about. And instead, it simply used the voices it already recorded to train an AI model that could produce limitless hours of Peppa Pig free of residuals. It would create less of a burden on the poor multinational attempting to extricate money from parents’ wallets. That’s the road these contractual obligations are paving, despite children being a particularly devious avenue. The letter continues, “Children cannot provide fully informed legal consent and a parent or guardian’s approval should never be used as a blanket licence to capture, clone, train, or reuse a child’s voice indefinitely.” 

“Any agreement involving a child’s voice should be fully exempt from all AI usage,” the letter concludes. “No child should have their future professional identity shaped by an AI model created before they were old enough to understand its consequences. Their voice should not become a permanent commercial asset before they have the legal and personal capacity to decide for themselves.”