Synthetic Faces in a Real Industry: How AI-Generated Deepfakes Challenge Actors’ Ownership of Likeness in the Film & TV Industry?

Deepfake technologies are transforming screen industries by enabling realistic simulations of human performance. This study investigates how AI-generated deepfake audio and videos challenge actors’ ownership of their likeness, focusing on underrepresented perspectives from South Asia. While existing scholarship centres on celebrity cases or Western legal frameworks, this research draws on sixteen semi-structured interviews with actors in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Using grounded theory analysis, it explores how synthetic replication endangers legal and economic rights, artistic integrity, consent, and emotional agency. Participants described exploitative contracts, loss of control over digital identity, and rising precarity, especially among lesser-known performers. Despite limited institutional support, actors expressed emerging forms of resistance and belief in the emotional depth and presence that only human performers can offer. By centring marginalised voices in AI discourse, this study offers a more grounded, ethically informed understanding of how synthetic media is reshaping labour and identity in film and television.