Pakistani actor Hira Tareen has issued a serious warning to fellow actors in the entertainment industry: read every word of your contracts, because AI clauses could cost you your entire career.
Tareen took to Instagram to share that while reviewing a contract for a drama in March, she spotted a clause that would give the production house and the channel full ownership of her “digital likeness”, meaning her face, voice, and gestures, not just for that project, but for anything, forever.
She described how this kind of exploitation works in stages. First, a production uses AI only to make posters, which seems harmless. Then they use your voice for dubbing. Then they call you in for fewer scenes because the AI model is already training on your existing footage. Eventually, the model is fully ready, and they no longer need you at all.
Tareen raised the issue with the Actors’ Collective of Pakistan (ACT), but even they were caught off guard, saying they never expected this to happen in Pakistan. Within weeks, other actors in the industry started receiving the same types of contracts, showing this is becoming a pattern, not a one-off case.
She pointed to Hollywood as a parallel, where industry professionals went on strike in 2023 and shut things down until they secured legal protections in their contracts. Pakistan has no equivalent of SAG-AFTRA, making actors here especially vulnerable.
Tareen urged actors to flag specific terms in contracts, including words like “likeness,” “perpetuity,” “digital replica,” “AI training model,” and “synthetic performance.” She advised consulting ACT Pakistan or a lawyer if any such terms appear.
Her message was simple but powerful: one actor reading the fine print changes nothing, but all actors collectively refusing the same harmful clauses change everything.
