Adults as Digital Child Actors

The article advances (and defends) the idea that emerging CGI/deepfake tools will make it feasible — and perhaps preferable — to stop using real children in movies and TV by having adults digitally portrayed as kids. This shifts a children’s‑welfare problem (exploitation, long‑term harm) into a tech‑governance one: who licenses likenesses, who verifies age, and what rules govern synthetic minors. — If adopted at scale, replacing child performers with adult‑generated digital likenesses would require new rules on consent, labor law, platform provenance, and child protection, affecting entertainment, employment law, and tech regulation.