South Korean actor Simon Lee was stunned when he saw his likeness — at times as a gynecologist or a surgeon — being used to promote questionable health cures on TikTok and Instagram.
He is one of scores of people who have licensed their image to AI marketing companies, and then ended up with the unpleasant surprise of seeing themselves feature in deepfakes, dubious adverts or even political propaganda.
“If it was a nice advertisement, it would’ve been fine to me. But obviously it is such a scam,” he said, adding that the terms of his contract prevented him from getting the videos removed.
Photo: Reuters
The result was that he was left him with his digital clone advocating for lemon balm tea to lose weight or ice baths to fight acne.
AI technology — cheaper than filming actors, but more realistic than an entirely AI-generated avatar — allows firms to build catalogs of digital models to appear in videos that mostly promote products or services.
Solene Vasseur, a digital communications and AI consultant, said this new form of advertising was fast and cheap compared to a real-life production.
Using avatars is also a way for brands to “show that they’re comfortable with the new tools.”
The method is quick and straightforward: half a day’s shooting, a green screen and a teleprompter.
The actor has to display different emotions, which will allow the artificial intelligence to make the avatar say all sorts of things, in an infinite number of languages.
“The performance in terms of the expressiveness of a real human — voice, facial movements, body language... is still superior to anything AI can generate right now,” said Alexandru Voica, head of corporate affairs at Synthesia, a UK-based industry leader.
To make a video, the platform’s customers just have to select a face, a language, a tone — such as serious or playful — and insert the script. The whole process comes at a modest price: the ultra-basic version is free, while the pro version costs a few hundred euros.
’AM I CROSSING A LINE?’
The contracts offer up to a few thousand euros, depending on duration and how well a person is known.
But they can be filled with legal jargon and sometimes abusive clauses, and in their rush to make quick cash, some people have found it hard to fully understand what they were signing up for.
Such was the case of Adam Coy, a 29-year-old actor and director based in New York, selling his image was a financial decision.
In October last year, he signed over the rights to his face and voice to MCM for US$1,000, granting the company the use of his avatar for one year.
“If I was more successful, I feel like I would maybe be able to have the ethical conversation with myself,” he said. “Is this right, or am I crossing a line by doing this?”
A few months later, his partner’s mother came across videos in which his digital clone claimed to come from the future and announced disasters to come.
None of this is forbidden by the contract, which only prohibits use for pornographic purposes, or in connection with alcohol and tobacco. Coy described the experience of watching his avatar as “surreal” and said he initially thought he would be an animated avatar.
But “it’s decent money for little work”, he added.
PROPAGANDA
British actor and model Connor Yeates, who signed a three-year contract with Synthesia for US$5,235, also encountered an unpleasant surprise in 2022.
At the time, he was sleeping on a friend’s sofa, he told British newspaper << “I don’t have rich parents and needed the money,” he said. This seemed like a “good opportunity.” But he then discovered that his image had been used to promote Ibrahim Traore, the president of Burkina Faso who took power in a coup in 2022. “Three years ago, a few videos slipped our content moderation partly because there was a gap in our enforcement for factually accurate but polarizing type content or videos with exaggerated claims or propaganda, for example.” said Voica, head of corporate affairs at Synthesia. The firm said it has introduced new procedures but other platforms have since appeared, some applying much less stringent rules. An AFP journalist was able to make an avatar from one of these platforms say outrageous things. “The clients I’ve worked with didn’t fully understand what they were agreeing to at the time,” said Alyssa Malchiodi, a lawyer who specializes in business law. “One major red flag is the use of broad, perpetual and irrevocable language that gives the company full ownership or unrestricted rights to use a creator’s voice, image and likeness across any medium,” she said. Contracts often contain clauses considered abusive, Malchiodi said, such as worldwide, unlimited, irrevocable exploitation, with no right of withdrawal. “Technology is evolving faster than courts or legislatures can respond,” the lawyer said. “These are not invented faces,” she said, calling for more caution.
May 11 to May 17 Traversing the southern slopes of the Yushan Range in 1931, Japanese naturalist Tadao Kano knew he was approaching the last swath of Taiwan still beyond colonial control. The “vast, unknown territory,” protected by the “fierce” Bunun headman Dahu Ali, was “filled with an utterly endless jungle that choked the mountains and valleys,” Kano wrote. He noted how the group had “refused to submit to the measures of our authorities and entrenched themselves deep in these mountains … living a free existence spent chasing deer in the morning and seeking serow in the evening,” even describing them as
As a different column was being written, the big news dropped that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) announced that negotiations within his caucus, with legislative speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT, party Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chair Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) had produced a compromise special military budget proposal. On Thursday morning, prior to meeting with Cheng over a lunch of beef noodles, Lu reiterated her support for a budget of NT$800 or NT$900 billion — but refused to comment after the meeting. Right after Fu’s
Yesterday, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) nominated legislator Puma Shen (沈伯洋) as their Taipei mayoral candidate, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) put their stamp of approval on Wei Ping-cheng (魏平政) as their candidate for Changhua County commissioner and former legislator Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) has begun the process to also run in Changhua, though she has not yet been formally nominated. All three news items are bizarre. The DPP has struggled with settling on a Taipei nominee. The only candidate who declared interest was Enoch Wu (吳怡農), but the party seemed determined to nominate anyone
What government project has expropriated the most land in Taiwan? According to local media reports, it is the Taoyuan Aerotropolis, eating 2,500 hectares of land in its first phase, with more to come. Forty thousand people are expected to be displaced by the project. Naturally that enormous land grab is generating powerful pushback. Last week Chen Chien-ho (陳健和), a local resident of Jhuwei Borough (竹圍) in Taoyuan City’s Dayuan District (大園) filed a petition for constitutional review of the project after losing his case at the Taipei Administrative Court. The Administrative Court found in favor of nine other local landowners, but
RSS