What happened
It was reported that within about a week of the Sora app launching at the end of September 2025, users were generating videos of deceased public figures, and their families were asking publicly for it to stop. In October OpenAI and the estate of a civil rights leader said generations depicting him had been paused at the estate’s request while guardrails for historical figures were strengthened, and that estates could ask for a likeness not to be used.
OpenAI, a performers’ union, an actor whose voice and likeness had been generated without his consent, and three talent bodies issued a joint statement later that month. It recorded that opt-in for voice and likeness had been OpenAI’s policy from launch, and that the company regretted the generations and had strengthened its guardrails. The route offered to the estates of the dead is an opt-out, which is the reverse of the arrangement for the living.
What an auditable version would have shown
The cases described in the sources reviewed entered the public record through external reporting, family advocacy or union escalation. A daughter asked publicly and then contacted the company. A performer noticed and told his union. No figure for how many generations claimed a real person’s likeness, how many were tested against a consent record, or how many were refused was identified in the sources reviewed.
Each generation could leave a record showing whose likeness was used, whether consent was on file, what the check found and what happened next. Put those records together and the company could see how many attempts were refused before publication and how many reached an audience. It could then show whether its policy was actually being enforced.
Where the gap was
It was reported that consent for a living person’s voice and likeness was required by policy from launch, and that a performer’s voice and likeness were nonetheless generated in some outputs without it. A PersonaGuard is designed to test whether a generated persona matches an identity the operator has authorised, at generation and again at output, and to record whether a likeness without a consent record was refused before publication. A ConstraintGate runs the standing rule as a check before publication, including where the person depicted is dead and the operator has undertaken to honour an estate’s request. A ConductRecord preserves the request, the likeness claimed, the consent record tested and the output. None of these decides who should be depictable. What they change is that a policy stated in public becomes something the operator can demonstrate it applied.
What governance should have looked like
OpenAI’s stated position is that opt-in for voice and likeness was its policy from the start, and that it strengthened its guardrails after outputs were generated without consent. The reporting reviewed here records that each case surfaced because the person depicted, a family member or a union raised it.
Where an organisation generates a real person’s voice or likeness, best practice would be to test a consent record before the generation is produced rather than after a complaint, to provide a documented estate or authorised representative route for declaring likeness preferences before generation rather than relying on a request after release, and to record what was checked so the organisation can state how much of its enforcement is its own.
Failure Pattern: a generative video product produced likenesses of real people without consent, and each case entered the record because the person depicted, a family member or a union raised it rather than because a check at generation refused it.
Governance Principle: when an organisation generates a real person’s voice or likeness, it should be able to show whose likeness was used, whether consent was given, and what happened when that consent was checked.
The reference implementation of PersonaGuard, ConstraintGate and ConductRecord is open source. It lives at github.com/saffronandindia/headlights-oss, Apache 2.0 licensed and free to install. The repository is public now.
Sources
- SAG-AFTRA, OpenAI and Bryan Cranston collaborate to ensure voice and likeness protections in Sora 2 (SAG-AFTRA, 20 October 2025)
- Sora 2 is here (OpenAI, 30 September 2025; page edited since publication)
- Launching Sora responsibly (OpenAI, 30 September 2025; page edited since publication)
- Report carrying the OpenAI and King estate joint statement of 16 October 2025 in full (AfroTech, 17 October 2025)
- Report on videos of deceased public figures and family responses (Fast Company, 11 October 2025)
- Report on the King depictions and the pause (BBC News, October 2025)
- Sora update number 1, on granular control for rightsholders over characters (Sam Altman, personal blog, 3 October 2025)
- Report on the strengthened guardrails and the union escalation (TheWrap, 20 October 2025)