Adults Portray Children via AI

Advances in CGI, deepfakes, and performance capture will make it increasingly practical and economical for studios to have adults act as children (with digital modification) or to generate child likenesses entirely from adults’ performance data. This raises urgent legal and ethical questions about consent, sexual‑exploitation risks, child labor rules, and whether markets or regulators should phase out real child performers or strictly limit synthetic child portrayals. — If entertainment shifts from child actors to synthetic or adult‑portrayed children, policymakers must update labor law, child‑safety protections, platform content rules, and age‑verification standards to prevent exploitation and protect minors.