AI Short-Drama Startup Buys Lookalike Faces to Build Celebrity-Adjacent, Legally Clean AI Characters

tinyfool · x · 2026-09-30

A Chinese AI short-drama founder shared an unusual playbook: his company commissions third parties to find ordinary people who resemble celebrities, then signs exclusive image-licensing deals with them at low prices to use their faces as training prototypes.

The resulting AI characters look very close to the corresponding stars while remaining legally clean at the source — celebrity likeness rights can't stop someone from simply resembling a star. The company plans to first use these AI characters in its own dramas and, if it works, resell the character-image rights to other short-drama studios.

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