AI licensing company to enable artists to control own likenesses as 99% of content predicted to be AI-generated by 2030

A new company from Katrien Grobler seeks to license human likenesses to AI companies creating content. She believes that "in 2030, 99% of all content will be AI-generated." Through her new company Twinnin, she proposes to ensure that "at least 50% of humans [in film and TV]" are "absolutely digital twins."

In practice, this means that she would sell usage rights to AI companies on behalf of human beings whose likeness is then used in AI-generated content. Grobler’s Twinnin will essentially sell AI clones for use in AI content. Actor Matthew McConaughey recently trademarked his likeness and voice so that he could not be used in AI content without his consent.

Twinnin would follow McConaughey's model to protect artists from having their likeness or voice used without fair terms, compensation, or the ability to say how it would be used. Grobler announced her plans for Twinnin in March, saying:

"AI Humans break trust. People do not love AI people. They love real people. Brands love real people. We all love real people! Real people in AI is the solution. The good news is AI is turning human identity into programmable media. Every face becomes scalable. Every voice becomes distributable. Every person becomes replicable. This shift is inevitable. What isn’t inevitable is who controls the value and protects the real human likeness."

This initiative comes as AI content has been vying for viewers' attention. AI has been implemented across entertainment, from advertising, to generated music and short-form content. It is used for graphics, story generation, and anywhere else companies have been able to plug it in. The term "AI slop" has been coined to designate AI content generated and pushed out to a disinterested viewing audience.

One project, Deadline notes, is the AI-generated "reality" show "Non Player Combat," which sees AI-generated contestants hunting each other to the death in what's been called a "cross between The Hunger Games, Fortnite and Traitors." Season 1 is done and season 2 is forthcoming.

Created by Tom Paton, the show is coming out from AiMation and will air on YouTube as well as their own platform. Speaking at Deadline's Reality TV Summit in the UK, Paton said "the interest around it is kind of crazy. One of the real goals for Season 2 is to make it feel more like Big Brother, where what you are watching is what happened yesterday. The episodes come in real time off the back of a simulation."

While American studios aren't funding the content at the ground level, noted Matt Campion of Spirit Studios, that "doesn't mean they won't buy the finished product." He said that his studio has been creating content that combines humans and AI. "This is additive," he said, "it doesn't take anything away and isn't trying to be too clever. The future is to move on as an indie and to be a modern-facing indie you have to embrace AI."

There has been a willingness on behalf of some artists in entertainment to embrace AI. Demi Moore said Hollywood must "find ways" to work with AI because "AI is here. And so to fight it is to fight something that is a battle that we will lose. So to find ways in which we can work with it, I think, is a more valuable path to take."

Smashing Pumpkins lead man Billy Corgan said, "I refuse, I patently refuse, to use AI in my music creation. Because to me it's a deal with the devil, simple." The music industry, he went on, is "flirting with the thing that will destroy us as an economy, as a business, as a movement. We're asking to be eradicated."