IICT and YouTube premiere four AI-made Indian short films from 'Create with AI', from Chanakya to Devi: The Nine Astras

Fox Nation premieres 'Houdini: Back From the Dead' on Oct 14

Fox Nation bills its Houdini docuseries as made entirely with AI imagery, but actors played the roles and AI altered their appearance over licensed archive. The tools are unnamed and nothing beyond a 30-second trailer has been seen.

Fox Nation premieres Houdini: Back from the Dead on Wednesday, Oct 14, two and a half weeks before the 100th anniversary of the magician's death. Fox bills the three-part series as the platform's first full-length production "to rely entirely on AI-generated imagery." Read the release closely, though, and much of it is human.

Actors played Houdini, his wife Bess and the rest of the family to capture real movement and performance, and AI then changed their appearance. A team of AI artists worked from licensed archive footage and more than 400 historic photographs. Fox says the scripts were written entirely by humans, and Variety reports the voices are a mix of human and AI audio. The producer is Red Rock Films, the Emmy-winning house behind Secrets of the Whales, through its Red Rock AI division.

Fox's "first" holds for Fox Nation only. Sky HISTORY aired Killer Kings, billed as fully AI-generated, in June 2025, and that team named its tools. Red Rock hasn't named any, and nobody outside the production has seen an episode; so far there is a 30-second trailer with an AI GENERATED label on every frame.

In practice, historical recreation is where commissioned AI work is landing first: a documentary producer with archive licensing and clearances already in place, using AI as a cheaper stand-in for motion capture. If you want that kind of job, the archive discipline matters as much as the model.

Source: Fox News Media release, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, Oct 8, 2026.

SAG-AFTRA sends its 2026 TV Animation deal to a member vote

SAG-AFTRA's animation voice actors vote until Oct 29 on a four-year deal whose AI terms are one sentence long, and the live-action text it says it imports exempts non-human characters. The animation clause itself is not yet public.

SAG-AFTRA's animation voice actors have until 5pm Pacific on Oct 29 to ratify a four-year TV Animation Agreement, and the AI terms they are voting on run to one sentence. The union says the deal adds "the improvements from the 2026 live action agreements" while keeping the existing animation terms, but no clause text has been published.

Animation already has a line live action never won: the 2024 deal says a voice actor "includes only humans," and a replica of a real actor's voice needs separate consent and pay. A synthetic voice that resembles no one needs only notice to the union and bargaining over pay, if any.

The live-action text the union says it imported favors human performers unless a studio sees "significant additional value" in a synthetic. That same text exempts non-human characters, which covers a lot of what voice actors play, and its human-preference test expires in June 2030. Nobody outside the bargaining room can say yet whether either limit came across.

The money is clearer: minimums rise 3% a year, backdated to July, and streaming residuals now match live action. Members get an informational Zoom on Oct 9, the first real chance for the clause text to surface.

In practice, if you cast a human voice and plan to extend it with a model, get separate written consent for the replica and pay for its use, because that is what union actors already expect from the big studios.

Source: SAG-AFTRA release, Oct 5, 2026; 2023 TV Animation and 2026 TV/Theatrical MOAs on amptp.org.