Last month, YouTube Shorts rolled out new AI-powered avatar features that allow creators to generate videos using AI versions of themselves. At nearly the same time, TikTok superstar Khaby Lame was linked to a $975 million AI likeness deal that later drew industry scrutiny as questions emerged around whether the transaction had formally closed.

Taken together, the developments point to a rapidly emerging reality inside influencer marketing: creator contracts are no longer just about sponsored posts and content usage rights. They are becoming negotiations over digital identity, likeness rights and AI-generated content ownership.

AI Has Turned Standard Creator Contracts Into “A Legal Minefield”

For years, likeness clauses in creator agreements were largely boilerplate. A brand would secure rights to use campaign assets across social channels, paid media or websites for a defined period of time. But generative AI has dramatically expanded what those assets can become.

Now, creators, agencies and brands are confronting a far more complicated question: who owns an AI version of a person?

The urgency is being accelerated by widespread AI adoption inside marketing departments. According to the IAB’s Creator Economy Ad Spend & Strategy Report 2025, three in four brands are already using, or planning to use, AI for creator marketing-related tasks, signaling how quickly AI has moved from experimentation into operational infrastructure.

Thomas Markland, founder of creator agency HYDP, says the industry entered this territory much faster than most executives anticipated.

“I think AI cloning capabilities have moved faster than most of the industry anticipated,” Markland said in an interview. “Last year, likeness and usage clauses in creator contracts were mainly boilerplate and just a formality.”

That is no longer true. “Now, these clauses are increasingly scrutinized as new AI tools for creators rapidly develop,” he said. “Typically, we’d obtain full rights to the content produced; however, this level of ownership opens up potential options for brands and agencies to utilize and manipulate assets using artificial intelligence as they see fit.”

In practice, that means a creator who filmed a single campaign months ago could theoretically have their likeness repurposed indefinitely across AI-generated campaigns they never physically participated in.

According to Markland, contracts have suddenly become significantly more complex.“Contracts have quickly become a legal minefield, the complexity of which is........

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