Former Neighbours actors and crew have raised concerns about plans to use AI to help re-edit old footage into mini episodes for mobile phone viewers.
Fremantle, producer of the now-defunct Australian soap opera, has partnered with US-based RoseBerry Media on the project, which will use AI to “scan decades of episodes”. Footage of Margot Robbie, who played Donna Freedman from 2008 to 2011, will be the initial focus. Robbie has yet to respond publicly; the BBC has contacted her agency.
What the companies say it is, and is not
This is the part worth stating precisely, because the project is more careful than the headline suggests.
The AI-assisted technology will “scan decades of episodes to map character arcs, storylines and standout moments, helping editors quickly identify the strongest material”, the companies said. The micro-dramas will use “original, previously broadcast footage, dialogue and performances”.
A Fremantle spokesman added that it “does not generate new scenes or performances, alter actors’ faces or likenesses, or use synthetic voices”, and that a human editor would be “reviewing and approving every stage of the editing process”.
So this is not a deepfake story. The AI is a search tool pointed at an archive — it finds the material, people cut it. Guy Hameiri, head of RoseBerry Media, said it is the first time the company will use its in-house AI tool to sift Neighbours footage, of which there are more than 9,300 episodes, to make “premium vertical television”.
Why there is still a dispute
Because consent and contracts are not the same thing, and nobody involved knows which one governs here.
Matt Werkmeister, 34, joined Neighbours in 2005 aged 13 and played Zeke Kinski, sharing many scenes with Robbie’s character. Now a Melbourne producer and director, he has not been approached by the companies. “If they’re creating a new micro-drama out of something that already exists, I feel there needs to be consent for using our image and voice as well as the writers,” he said.
Robbie is “obviously a big draw card” and “it’s nice to watch old clips from shows you used to watch”, he added — but when he signed his contract two decades ago, “streaming didn’t even exist as a platform”, so he is unsure what his rights are.
Sam Clark, 39, played Ringo Brown from 2006 to 2010, a character who later marries Robbie’s. Speaking from Los Angeles, where he now works as a producer and voice actor, he said he had not heard about the project until a friend sent him an article.
“I don’t have a negative view of the work that we did all those years ago getting a second life as long as it’s not being manipulated into new storylines,” Clark said. “AI and social media obviously wasn’t a thing when I signed my contract 20 years ago so I’m still trying to understand exactly what those parameters are.”
That is the whole problem in one sentence. These contracts were written for a world of broadcast and repeats. They do not say anything about an archive being indexed by software and reassembled into a different format for a different medium, because nobody drafting them imagined it.
The objection that is not about rights
Sound recordist Bruce Findlay, 68, has worked in television for close to five decades and was on Neighbours from episode one. Using AI to make short episodes from old footage was, he said, “like cutting up a Picasso and rebuilding it”.
“We worked so hard to get this product out… and now they’re chopping it up into little tiny pieces, throwing it up in the air and putting it back together again using AI — it belittles the process.”
That is an argument about craft rather than law, and it will not be settled by a contract. It is also the objection least likely to be addressed, because the people who feel it hardest are the ones the money will not reach.
Who gets paid
It is understood Fremantle is in discussions with two unions, and that residuals — ongoing payments to actors and writers when work is re-aired or syndicated — will be paid. This does not apply to crew.
The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance confirmed the talks. “Workers should be consulted before their likeness or expertise is used in a way they could never have envisioned when they signed contracts decades ago,” said MEAA acting chief executive Adam Portelli.
Fremantle’s commercial and international head Jens Richter called the project “an exciting example of how technology and creative thinking can unlock new value” from the catalogue. Hameiri said it would “reimagine” the material, giving it “new audiences, new relevance and new value”.
Why this matters beyond one soap opera
Every broadcaster sitting on decades of tape is doing this arithmetic. The archive cost nothing more to make, the tool to index it is now cheap, and vertical video is where the audience went.
Bangladesh has fifty years of television and film in exactly that position, much of it under unclear or contested rights, and almost none of it covered by contracts that anticipated this. The question Werkmeister and Clark are asking — what did I actually sign away in 2005 — is one that will be asked here too, and it is cheaper to answer it before someone starts indexing than after.
Related: the owners of Elvis Presley’s catalogue are suing Anthropic over songs used in training — the same question of old rights meeting new uses, further along.
