As stated by a top negotiator, the revised agreement, which has not yet been accepted by the union's national board, has "commonsense" AI protections.

According to the performers' organization SAG-AFTRA, Nickelodeon has agreed to provide voice actors on animated series like Dora the Explorer and The Patrick Star Show with "commonsense" AI safeguards.

On Wednesday, the union declared that it had achieved a provisional agreement with Nickelodeon on voice acting in animated shows for Paramount+ and basic cable. Along with certain fee hikes, a new premium, and accelerated payment deadlines, the three-year interim deal covers productions including Rugrats, The Loud House, Kamp Koral, and Rock Paper Scissors.

The safeguards previously agreed in SAG-AFTRA's separate TV animation contracts in 2023 are incorporated into the Nickelodeon agreement's AI clauses. The Nickelodeon agreement, for example, provides animation-specific standards for identifying a performer in a digital reproduction and defines the word "voice actor" as solely referring to people (recognizability activates certain safeguards in the agreement).

The agreement stipulates that in the case of employment-based digital replicas, actors need only be identified as contributing to the creation of the replica through business documents, since actors in animation can voice multiple characters (for example, Nancy Cartwright can play both Bart Simpson and Ralph Wiggum on The Simpsons). For independently-made digital reproductions, however, just their character voices must be identifiable.

Other measures include requiring frequent meetings between the union and producers to discuss the use of artificial intelligence in the workplace and allowing artists to collect residuals if their voice is digitally translated into a foreign language.