Gal Gadot spent six months with lawyers making sure nobody could build a CGI Gal Gadot
Gal Gadot is defending Doug Liman’s Bitcoin movie, revealing she fought a lengthy contract battle to shield herself from AI — and chose to embrace tech anyway.
Let's talk about Gal Gadot and her frankly epic contract battle over AI for her latest film, the one that dives headfirst into the world of Bitcoin with director Doug Liman. She went on the Happy Sad Confused podcast and spilled rather a lot, some of it proper eye-opening if you're interested in how much say actors actually have over keeping their faces out of the hands of rogue algorithms.
The Six-Month Stand-Off
A bit of background: industry panic over AI isn't exactly new, but Gadot took it to another level. Before she shot a single scene, she spent half a year — yes, six months just on contracts — making absolutely certain that no digital Frankenstein would start cobbling together her image or her voice without explicit consent.
Gadot told the podcast: "I'll tell you this was the longest contract I've ever worked on. I think it was 6 months for my lawyers to go through any scenario."
It wasn't just about her own comfort, either. She hammered in strict boundaries — AI was not allowed anywhere near her actual performance. She made it clear that if someone wanted a CGI Gadot, they could get lost. She called in her legal team to sort through every angle, considering scenarios even the lawyers hadn't thought of. The upshot? SAG-AFTRA (that's the actors' union, if you're not keeping up) noticed what she was doing and rang her lawyers to get tips for writing safeguards into everyone else's contracts.
On the union taking notice, Gadot said: "SAG had called my lawyers to ask for pointers to update the SAG contract to protect other actors."
In effect, Gadot and her team have accidentally set a sort of template for legal protection in Hollywood — at least, when it comes to fighting off AI encroachment. The industry's watching, so it could become standard sooner rather than later.
On-Set Tech and the Actual Filmmaking
Despite all that anxiety, the AI stuff wasn't used quite as you might expect. The system handled basic things like sets and lighting. The actual acting? Completely untouched by chatbots and deepfakes. Gadot described it as being stripped right back — just her, the rest of the cast, and endless takes because there was no waiting around for someone to faff with lights. Ironically, the process wound up a bit like doing theatre, non-stop, raw, no pauses.
The rest of the crew stayed on, so it wasn't some dystopian robot-run affair. But the core emotional stuff — the performance itself — was strictly humans only, by design.
The Energy of ‘Bitcoin’
As for the film? It's called Bitcoin, and no, Gadot still hasn't seen a final cut or even any of the finished scenes herself yet, apparently. She called it "a crazy film," with a slightly wild tone the filmmakers want to preserve. Don't expect a dry tech thriller — this one sounds like it's determined to stay as unpredictable as the crypto market itself.
The contract for Bitcoin took Gadot and her team six months to hammer out, primarily to get comprehensive protections from AI misuse.
If you're tracking where Hollywood's going with AI rights, this little episode is one to watch. Gadot isn't ignoring the technology — she's dead honest about finding it unnerving — but she means to master it, not run scared. For her, it's about clear boundaries: using AI where it's helpful, but never letting it replace the actual people on screen.