Clearance records for AI in entertainment
Prove what you cleared, not just that you meant to.
Answer a five-minute intake. ClearFrame returns exactly which consents, disclosures and residual triggers apply to your production — each with its citation and effective date — generates the documents, collects signatures against a hash-chained audit log, and exports the Clearance Packet you hand to the E&O underwriter, network standards, brand legal and the delivery desk.
No card. One project free, read-only. A single Clearance Packet export is $149 — no subscription, because production is project-based.
- Intake
- ~5 min
- Regimes
- Union · State · Platform · EU
- Output
- One packet
The problem
Four bodies now ask you the same question in four different formats.
A union agreement wants a signed rider with a specific description of intended use. A state statute wants a conspicuous disclosure in the creative. An advertising platform wants a declaration in the campaign object. The EU wants a marking inside the file. None of them accepts the others’ artifact.
The facts are scattered
What AI touched the picture lives in a VFX bid, two vendor emails and a conversation nobody wrote down. The person who has to represent those facts to an underwriter was not in the room.
The answer is production-specific
The obligations turn on contract type, technique, airing states, platforms and EU reach. A checklist written for someone else’s production is wrong for yours in ways that are not obvious.
The cost is in reconstruction
The material usually exists. Assembling it in prep costs hours; assembling it at delivery, from people who have dispersed, costs weeks — in the window where delay is most expensive.
The tooling serves the talent
What has been built for this so far sits on the performer’s side of the table. The producer’s side — the side that signs the representations and warranties — has been left to spreadsheets and email.
How it works
One intake, four outputs, in the order production actually needs them.
Answer the intake
About five minutes. Contract type, what AI touched, which states it airs in, which platforms it runs on, whether it reaches the EU, who the performers and vendors are.
Get the requirements matrix
A deterministic determination of exactly which consents, disclosures and residual triggers apply — each with its authority, citation, effective date and severity. Not a checklist someone wrote once; a rules engine over a dated corpus.
Generate and execute the documents
Digital replica riders, state addenda, non-union consents, vendor attestations, crew acknowledgments. Signed in-product, with a hash-chained audit log recording who signed what, when, and against which version of the document.
Export the Clearance Packet
One PDF that carries the determination, the executed instruments, the signature record and the clearance log. That is the artifact you hand to the underwriter, the network, the brand and the delivery desk.
The artifact
What is in a Clearance Packet
One PDF, assembled in the order a clearance reviewer reads. It is the thing you hand over — to the E&O underwriter, to network standards and practices, to brand legal, and to the distributor’s delivery desk.
- 01
Determination and requirements matrix
Every obligation that applied, its authority, citation, effective date and severity — with the corpus version that produced it.
- 02
Intake record
The facts the determination was made on, dated, so a reviewer can see what was known and when.
- 03
Executed consent instruments
Digital replica riders, standalone consents, state addenda and AI training consents, as signed.
- 04
Signature and audit record
A hash-chained log: signer, timestamp, document hash. Alteration after signing is detectable rather than arguable.
- 05
AI and likeness clearance log
Item, rights holder, consent instrument, date, scope, expiry — in the same columns as the rest of your clearance log.
- 06
Vendor AI attestations
What each vendor used, on what material, and whether performer material was used for training or fine-tuning.
- 07
Synthetic performer register
Where a generated figure appears: the vendor, the tool, the source material, and the basis for use.
- 08
Disclosure record
What was disclosed, where, on which asset version, and who approved it.
- 09
Provenance and export manifest
Which shots carry AI-generated or AI-manipulated material, which exports carried credentials, and the hash of the delivered master.
Documents ClearFrame generates
- Digital Replica Rider — Employment-Based Digital Replica
- Digital Replica Consent — Independently Created Digital Replica
- Digital Replica Rider — Commercials
- Digital Replica Consent — Non-Union Production
- Voice and Performance Data — AI Training Consent
- Synthetic Performer — Use Justification and Notice Record
- State Digital Replica Consent Addenda
- Deceased Personality — Estate Consent and Authority Record
- Crew Artificial Intelligence Use Acknowledgment
- Vendor Artificial Intelligence Use Attestation
- AI and Likeness Clearance Log
- AI Provenance and Export Manifest
Why the audit log is hash-chained
A signature is only useful if the document it was applied to can be shown to be the document in the file. ClearFrame hashes each document body at signing and chains the signature records, so a document altered after signing is detectable rather than arguable.
That matters at exactly one moment — when someone questions the record, months after everyone involved has moved on. It costs nothing to have and cannot be added later.
The packet reports what the chain shows: which document was signed, by whom, at what time, and whether a byte of it has changed since.
Who it is for
Built for the productions without a legal department.
Studios have people for this. Everyone else has a producer with a phone and a delivery date.
- Commercial and branded content shops
- Working under the 2025 Commercials Contract, with generated presenters, voice models for versioning and forty cutdowns on a six-week schedule — and no in-house legal function anywhere in the chain.
- Independent producers
- Features, series and documentaries that need to survive E&O underwriting and a distributor’s delivery schedule without a studio legal department behind them.
- Post and VFX vendors
- Asked by clients to attest to what tools were used, on what material, and whether anything was trained on performer data — with nothing standing to answer it from.
- Agency producers
- Accountable to a brand’s legal team for AI facts that live in three vendors’ project files, and to a media team that has to declare AI use at campaign level.
Regulatory timeline
What changed, and when it started to bite
Eighteen months, four regimes, no coordination between them. Each row links to a full explainer with the authority, the citations, the effective dates, and a working read on where the law is still open.
| Date | What | Who it reaches | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| April 1, 2025 | SAG-AFTRA 2025 Commercials Contract takes effect First agreement to set out detailed digital replica and synthetic performer consent provisions. | Signatory commercial producers | In force |
| In force | California, Illinois and New York digital replica consent statutes Informed consent required where a replica is used in place of work a performer would otherwise have performed in person. | All productions, signatory or not | In force |
| June 4, 2026 | SAG-AFTRA 2026 TV/Theatrical Agreement ratified Ratified with 91.42% voting in favor. | SAG-AFTRA membership | Ratified |
| June 9, 2026 | New York synthetic performer disclosure requirement takes effect Conspicuous disclosure required. $1,000 first violation, $5,000 each subsequent. | Producers and creators of commercial advertising running in New York | In force |
| July 1, 2026 | SAG-AFTRA 2026 TV/Theatrical Agreement takes effect Runs to June 30, 2030. Consent must be clear and conspicuous, based on a reasonably specific description of intended use. | Signatory TV and theatrical producers | In force |
| July 9, 2026 | Google AI ad disclosure rolls out Declared at campaign level. Meta separately requires AI-generated content disclosure labels on sponsored content. | Advertisers on Search, YouTube and Discover | In force |
| August 2026 | EU AI Act Article 50 enforcement begins Deployers must disclose artificially generated content — relaxed to an existence disclosure for evidently creative works. The machine-readable marking duty in Art. 50(2) sits on the AI provider, not the production. | Anything distributed into the European Union | Commencing |
Every entry carries its authority, its citation and its effective date.
Method
Deterministic, dated, and traceable to the rule that produced it.
A determination that cannot be explained is no use to an attorney, and an attorney is who reads this.
The requirements matrix comes from a rules engine over a versioned corpus — not from a model deciding case by case. The same facts produce the same determination every time, and every obligation traces back to a specific rule with an authority, a citation and an effective date.
Nothing arrives unattributed. Cal. Lab. Code § 927, Cal. Civ. Code § 3344.1(a)(2)(A)(i), 765 ILCS 1075/30, N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law § 396-b, SAG-AFTRA General Provisions §§ 64 and 64.1, Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 Art. 50 — each obligation names the text it comes from, so a reviewer can go and read it.
Determinations record the corpus version that produced them. A packet exported in July reads as a July determination rather than being silently rewritten when the corpus moves.
Questions
Frequently asked
- Does using ClearFrame make my production compliant?
- It gives you the record that proves what you cleared. A dated determination of every obligation that applied to your facts, the instruments you executed against them, a hash-chained signature log that makes post-hoc alteration detectable, and one packet that presents all of it in the order a clearance reviewer reads. Compliance is a call your counsel, your underwriter and the reviewer holding the file make — and every one of them makes it on the record in front of them. ClearFrame is how that record exists before they ask.
- What does “deterministic” mean here?
- The requirements matrix comes from a rules engine, not from a language model deciding case by case. The same facts produce the same determination every time, each obligation traces to a specific rule with a citation and an effective date, and every determination records the corpus version that produced it. When the corpus changes, you can see exactly what changed and re-run.
- My production is non-union. Do I need this?
- Union agreements do not bind you. The statutes do. California, Illinois and New York informed-consent requirements apply regardless of signatory status, New York’s synthetic performer disclosure requirement applies to any commercial advertising running there, platform policies apply to your media buy, and E&O underwriting asks the same questions of everyone. Non-union productions are the ones that arrive at delivery with the least documentation.
- Can my E&O broker or the network actually use the packet?
- That is what it is built for. One PDF carrying the determination, the executed instruments, the signature record and the clearance log, laid out in the shape a clearance reviewer already knows how to read — no new mental model, no chasing you for the attachment that went missing.
- What happens when the rules change?
- The corpus is versioned and dated, and every rule carries its own effective date. Determinations record which version produced them, so a packet exported in July stays readable as a July determination instead of being silently rewritten underneath you. When a rule moves, you re-run and compare.
- Do you replace my production attorney?
- No, and the product is built on the opposite assumption. Most of what an entertainment attorney bills on this work is assembling and chasing records. ClearFrame does the assembling, so the conversation with counsel is about the two genuinely hard questions instead of whether the rider was ever signed.
Find out what applies to your production.
The assessment takes about five minutes. You get the full requirements matrix, with citations and effective dates, before you pay anything.
No card required. One project on the free tier, read-only.