South Korean actor Simon Lee was stunned when he saw his likeness – at times as a gynaecologist or a surgeon – being used to promote questionable health cures on TikTok and Instagram.
He is one of scores of people who licensed their image to AI marketing companies and then ended up with the unpleasant surprise of seeing themselves featured 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 says, adding that the terms of his contract prevented him from getting the videos removed.
AI technology – cheaper than filming actors but more realistic than an entirely AI-generated avatar – allows firms to build catalogues of digital models to appear in videos that mostly promote products or services.