The artificial intelligence boom has created a new marketplace in China where people can rent out their faces.
A growing number of online platforms are paying people anywhere between $15 and $700 to license their likeness for AI-generated content. The platforms have created catalogs of images — either uploaded by users or taken at designated studios — where producers can browse faces by gender, age, or category such as “girl-next-door,” “rugged,” or “supermodel.” They can also filter candidates based on the genre they are casting, whether it’s a thriller, comedy, or romance.
Users can choose what products or settings their faces can appear in — from television commercials and video games to short-form dramas — and set their own prices based on the type of face, permitted uses, and the number of productions it can appear in.
“Whether actors and models choose to license their faces on our platform or not, AI has already disrupted the industry,” Long Lyu, the operations lead at AI-image rights platform New Claw, told Rest of World. “Selling the rights to their photos gives them a way to earn, while continuing their careers offline.”