A simple way to add AI protection to the deals you negotiate by email
If you’re an actors’ agent, asking about AI use is probably becoming a fairly regular part of your negotiations.
Ideally, you ask about it early.
You find out whether the producer, advertiser, publisher or other buyer intends to use your client’s voice, image, likeness or performance with AI. You agree what is (and isn’t) permitted. And you get that position clearly recorded in the contract.
But deals don’t always happen that neatly, do they?
Sometimes there isn’t even a document called a “contract”.
Instead, the deal happens in your inbox.
Fee? Agreed.
Usage? Agreed.
Dates? Confirmed.
You ask about AI alongside four other points. The other side replies to three of them… but somehow skips that one.
Or nobody raises AI because the job doesn’t look like an obvious AI project in the first place.
Then suddenly you’re at:
“Great, all confirmed!”
So where does that leave your client’s voice, image, likeness and performance?
There’s a simple bit of contract housekeeping that can give you an additional safety net in precisely these situations:
Put an AI rights reservation clause in your email signature.
Yes. Your email signature. More agents should be taking advantage of this.
This is my two copy-and-paste clause templates + my short implementation guide.
First: this is a safety net, but not a magic wand.
Putting an AI clause in your email signature does not magically prevent someone from misusing your client’s performance or likeness.
Nor is it a replacement for asking about AI during the negotiation.
My advice remains:
Ask about AI use early and clearly.
If AI use is intended, find out what is actually being proposed and negotiate it properly.
But the email footer can provide a useful back-up.
Why?
Because of something that gets overlooked surprisingly often: an email chain can be a contract.
We tend to imagine a contract as a document.
A PDF arrives. CONTRACT is written at the top. Everyone negotiates it, signs at the bottom and puts it in a folder.
Lovely.
Except plenty of engagements aren’t made like that.
You can form a contract through an exchange of emails. One side makes an offer. The other negotiates. You agree the essential terms. The job is confirmed.
Your email correspondence may therefore be doing much more legal work than you think.
And that creates an opportunity.
How can something in your email signature become part of the deal?
Here comes a little bit of contract law.
The relevant principle is called incorporation.
Under English contract law, you don’t necessarily have to expressly negotiate every individual contractual term for it to form part of your agreement.
In appropriate circumstances, terms can be incorporated into a contract where the other party has been given adequate notice of them before the contract is made.
You encounter this principle constantly in your day-to-day life.
Think about buying something online and ticking:
“I agree to the Terms & Conditions.”
You almost certainly haven’t negotiated those terms. You may not even have read them. (No judgement, who has time?)
But you were given the opportunity to see them before agreeing.
That’s the basic idea behind incorporation.
If your emails contain contractual wording reserving particular AI rights, and make clear that the wording is intended to form part of engagements agreed through that correspondence, that wording may become part of the contract being made through those emails.
Which means your email signature can do more than list your telephone number and agency website.
It can do a little legal heavy lifting too.
What should your AI footer cover?
You may already have an AI clause you use regularly.
If you understand it, it reflects the position you want to take for your clients and it works well in practice, great.
But there is an important additional piece when you’re putting it in your email footer:
The wording needs to make clear that the term is intended to form part of engagements agreed or confirmed through the correspondence.
And if you don’t already have a standard AI clause, I would at minimum want your wording to deal expressly with two high-risk uses:
AI training + digital cloning/simulation.
I’ve drafted two versions for actors’ and performers’ agents: a belt-and-braces version, with more detailed drafting, and a concise version for agents who don’t want quite so much legalese sitting underneath every email.
Because there is a balance to strike between: Protective. Professional. Approachable. (I debated between the word ‘friendly’ and ‘approachable’ on that last one. Does an effective agent need to be ‘friendly’, or is that a gendered trope of the industry? I digress.)
How do you use it?
Luckily, this bit is straight-forward.
4 simple steps:
Choose your clause. Read it first, please don’t copy and paste legal wording you don’t understand just because a lawyer on the internet told you to.
Then add it to the signature of the email account you use for deal negotiations.
Keep it legible. You do not need red text, yellow highlighting or THE INFAMOUS ALL-CAPS LEGAL DRAFTING.
Send yourself a test email to check it displays properly.
You’re done.
You do the work once, and the clause protects your client in the background.
When shouldn’t you rely on your EMail Signature clause?
This is the important point.
If you receive a formal contract that expressly grants AI rights, deal with those rights in the contract. Don’t assume contradictory wording sitting in your email footer will address it.
Likewise, be careful if the final contract (if you do receive and sign one) contains an entire agreement clause or otherwise contradicts the position in your footer.
And if AI is actually part of the proposed job (the other side wants to clone your client, train an AI model on their performance or generate new performances using their likeness) you’ve moved beyond email-footer territory.
That is an AI deal. Negotiate the AI deal.
The footer is there for the messy reality of everyday deals where AI wasn’t expressly dealt with. It isn’t a substitute for negotiating a known AI use properly.
The rule I want you to remember
Protecting your clients against unwanted AI uses doesn’t always require adding another complicated process to your workload.
Sometimes it is about tightening up the processes you already have.
So:
Ask about AI early.
Agree the position clearly.
Put it into the contract where you can.
And use your email footer as an additional safety net for the deals moving quickly through your inbox.
I’ve made that last part easy for you with this template clause, and short guide on how to use it.
Speak soon,
Mathilde
Dr Mathilde Pavis | Legal counsel & Founder of Agents’ Counsel
