The Digital Replica Rider: what it is and how to write the intended-use description

The Digital Replica Rider is a short instrument appended to a performer’s employment contract that records consent to create or use a digital replica of that performer. The standardised version exists at Exhibit 3 to the 2025 Commercials Contract, jointly drafted by SAG-AFTRA and the Joint Policy Committee — the advertiser-side bargaining body, not the AMPTP. This is the point most often got wrong: there is no equivalent standardised rider for the 2026 TV/Theatrical Agreement. That agreement sets out what consent must contain, not what form it must take, so on a TV/Theatrical production the instrument you use is your own.

Its job is narrow and specific. The underlying employment contract establishes the engagement; the rider establishes what may be done with a synthetic version of the performer. Keeping those separate is deliberate. Consent to be photographed is not consent to be modeled, and consent to be modeled for one purpose is not consent to be modeled for another.

Under the SAG-AFTRA agreements, consent may be given either through the rider appended to the employment contract or in a separate writing signed by the performer. Where a replica is independently created — built without the performer being employed to create it — a standalone consent instrument is the usual vehicle, because there is no employment contract to append to and the provenance of the source material has to be established on its own.

Both the 2025 Commercials Contract and the 2026 TV/Theatrical Agreement require that consent be clear and conspicuous and be based on a reasonably specific description of the intended use of the digital replica. Only the Commercials side supplies a test for what that means: the description must convey information consistent with what a performer would receive — scripts and storyboards, for example — at the time of casting and audition. The TV/Theatrical agreement uses the same phrase without defining it. Everything else in the rider is comparatively mechanical. The description is where consents fail.

A description fails when it cannot be checked. “Producer may create and use a digital replica of Performer in the Picture and in all media now known or hereafter devised, in perpetuity, throughout the universe” describes no use at all; it describes the absence of a limit. It is also the exact drafting posture that California law treats as vulnerable where the performer was not represented by counsel or a union representative.

A description works when a stranger can hold it against the finished material and answer yes or no. Name the technique, the material it is applied to, the context it appears in, and the media it will run in. If more than one technique is in play — a face replacement and a voice model — describe each. If a use is contemplated but not yet decided, that is not a reason to write it broadly; it is a reason to come back for a second consent when it is decided.

Beyond the description of intended use, a rider that holds up under review identifies the performer and the production unambiguously; states whether the replica is employment-based or independently created; states the term and territory for the use; addresses whether the replica may be used in productions other than the one named; addresses compensation and residual treatment where applicable; and is signed and dated by the performer, with a guardian signature where the performer is a minor.

It should also record the negative space: uses that are not consented to. An explicit carve-out — no use in political advertising, no use in another production, no use to generate new performance after delivery — is worth more at review time than three paragraphs of grant language, because it shows the parties turned their minds to scope.

Minors need particular care. A minor cannot give effective consent in their own right; the instrument must be executed by a parent or legal guardian. Where the term of the replica use would extend past the minor’s eighteenth birthday, court approval of the underlying contract may additionally be required depending on the jurisdiction — settle that question before the instrument is executed, not at delivery.

A rider is only as good as the copy you can produce later. Store the executed instrument with its intended-use description attached — not cross-referenced to a schedule that lives in someone’s email — and keep a record of when it was signed relative to when the replica was created. Consent obtained after creation is a remediation, and an honest record shows it as one.

Version the description. If the use changes, the correct move is a new rider or an amendment that restates the description in full, not a redline that leaves two inconsistent versions in the file. At delivery, the question is which description governed the shot that shipped, and a clean answer is worth considerably more than a complete one.