Celebrities turn AI clones into big business

For years, celebrities fought a losing battle against unauthorized deepfakes. Now, they are flipping the script by turning themselves into official, billable AI duplicates.

As Metaphysic CEO Tom Graham put it, stars "get paid, but they don't have to turn up." A celebrity simply spends a few minutes in a studio with a 3D scanner, giving brands enough source material to generate countless hours of commercial footage.

Time travel and infinite endorsements

The business of celebrity marketing is massive. Nike alone was due to pay $1.3 billion in endorsement deals in the fiscal year ending May 31. Historically, stars traded their precious time and gave up significant control over how their images were used.

Virtual doubles change that math entirely, allowing celebrities to do things that are physically impossible, like traveling back in time. In 2021, Metaphysic used AI to recreate former NFL star Deion Sanders as he looked on the night of the 1989 draft for a Procter & Gamble Gillette commercial. Golf legend Jack Nicklaus, currently 83, partnered with Soul Machines to generate an interactive AI twin of himself at age 38, the absolute peak of his career.

Athletes are already testing the waters. Last year, Puma debuted a fashion line at New York Fashion Week featuring an AI-generated 3D avatar of soccer star Neymar, built using Epic Games' MetaHuman tool inside Unreal Engine. Puma chief brand officer Adam Petrick noted that the brand can deploy Neymar's digital double across multiple formats throughout his contract.

Hollywood power brokers are paying close attention. Talent giant CAA has partnered with Metaphysic and Soul Machines to advise clients on commercializing their digital identities while protecting their rights. Metaphysic has already signed on to provide AI services for an upcoming Robert Zemeckis film starring Tom Hanks.

Even high fashion is shifting. Models rarely own the rights to the photos taken of them, but supermodel Eva Herzigova recently unveiled a digital twin that mimics her runway walk and personal mannerisms. The key difference: Herzigova and her agency retain full ownership of the digital asset, which will soon appear on e-commerce sites to model clothing for shoppers.

Why it matters

We think this is one of the smartest intellectual property pivots of the generative AI era.

Instead of playing an endless game of whack-a-mole against rogue deepfakes, stars are preemptively manufacturing the "authentic" digital standard. They are shifting their business model from renting out physical hours to licensing scalable digital IP, enabling deals they simply could not take on before.

For brands, the upside is obvious. An AI avatar never gets jet lag, never demands a luxury trailer, and can interact with thousands of consumers simultaneously in real time. Soul Machines CEO Greg Cross calls this real-time emotional connection the future of marketing.

However, we see significant risks ahead. When celebrity likenesses become infinitely replicable software assets, the scarcity that made star endorsements valuable in the first place could erode quickly. Furthermore, while A-listers stand to collect passive income from their digitized likenesses, the background actors, runway doubles, and crew members who rely on physical productions are the ones who will ultimately pay the price.