Your Face, Your Voice, Your Rights: What Content Creators Need to Know About AI and Their Likeness
If you create content professionally, your face, your voice, and your likeness are not just personal attributes. They are business assets. They are what your audience recognizes, what brands pay to be associated with, and what your entire creative identity is built around. The question of who controls those assets, and under what conditions, has become one of the most pressing legal issues in the creator economy.
AI has made this urgent. The technology to generate convincing versions of real people from existing footage, photos, and audio recordings is not experimental anymore. It is in active commercial use. And the contracts most creators are signing have not caught up.
What California Law Already Requires
California AB 2602 took effect on January 1, 2025. It was a meaningful step forward. The law requires that any contract allowing a company to create a digital replica of a performer's voice or likeness be written in plain language, clearly describe what is being created and how it will be used, and be agreed to with independent representation in place. You have to have your own attorney or union rep before you can consent to a digital replica clause.
This matters for content creators because it applies broadly. It is not limited to union performers or traditional entertainment contracts. If you work in California and a brand or platform wants to create an AI-generated version of you under a contract, AB 2602 governs how that process has to work.
What the law does not do is set your rate, define the scope of use, or limit how long the license lasts. Those are still entirely yours to negotiate. The law ensures the conversation happens honestly. It does not finish it for you.
What Is Actually Happening in Creator Contracts
Most brand deal contracts and platform agreements do not address AI explicitly or address it in language so broad it is effectively a blank check. Phrases like 'all digital formats now known or hereafter developed' and 'any technology including artificial intelligence' have been appearing in creator agreements for years. Most people who signed them did not know what they were agreeing to at the time.
More recently, some brands have started including explicit AI clauses that grant them the right to create AI-generated versions of your content and your likeness for use in advertising, product promotion, and content creation. These clauses are often positioned as standard and non-negotiable. They are not. They are aggressive asks that carry significant value and should be treated as such.
Platform terms of service have also moved in this direction. Most major platforms now include language that gives them a broad license to your content, including the right to use it in connection with AI systems. You still own your content when you post it. But the platform's license is wide.
The Right of Publicity and Why It Exists Separately From Copyright
Copyright protects the creative work itself. Your right of publicity protects your identity. These are two different legal rights and they operate independently.
What this means practically is that a brand cannot use your face, your voice, or your recognizable persona in AI-generated content just because they have a license to content you created for them. A copyright license conveys rights to the work. It does not convey rights to your identity. Those require a separate agreement.
This distinction matters enormously in the AI context. A brand that has licensed your content for organic social posting does not automatically have the right to feed that content into an AI system to generate new versions of you. The question of whether they do depends entirely on the specific language of your agreement and the scope of the rights you granted.
Four Things Every Creator Needs in Their AI Clauses
Whether you are reviewing a brand deal, a platform agreement, or a collaboration contract, here is what to look for when AI use of your likeness is on the table.
First, explicit consent language. The contract should state clearly and specifically that you are consenting to the creation of AI-generated versions of your likeness, and it should describe what that means in concrete terms. Vague language that could be interpreted to include AI use is not sufficient.
Second, defined scope. What specifically can the AI-generated version of you be used for? Advertising campaigns? Product promotion? Content creation? Social media? Training data for future AI systems? Each of these is a separate use case with separate value. The scope should be defined, not open-ended.
Third, approval rights. You should have the ability to review AI-generated content that uses your likeness before it is published or distributed. This is especially important in advertising contexts where your association with a brand or message has direct reputational implications.
Fourth, a defined term with renewal rights. AI-generated versions of your likeness should not be licensed in perpetuity by default. Negotiate a specific term, and make sure there is a process for what happens when that term ends. If the brand wants to continue using AI versions of you after the initial term, that should require a new negotiation.
What to Do Right Now
If you have active contracts that involve your content, your image, or your voice, read the AI-related language. If there is none, that is not necessarily protection. Ambiguous language around 'all formats' and 'all technologies' may be interpreted to include AI use depending on how it is written and when it was signed.
If you are heading into a new brand deal or platform agreement, add AI to your checklist alongside usage rights, exclusivity, and kill fees. Ask specifically what the brand or platform intends to do with your likeness in connection with AI. Get the answer in the contract, not just in conversation.
And if you are not sure what your existing agreements say or what you should be asking for in new ones, that is exactly the kind of question ELLA is built to answer.