People in China are renting out their faces to AI as a new marketplace emerges online. A growing number of platforms are paying individuals anywhere between $15 and $700 to license their likeness for AI-generated content. The services allow producers to browse catalogs of images, either uploaded by users or taken at designated studios, and filter candidates by gender, age, or category such as “girl-next-door,” “rugged,” or “supermodel.” Producers can also select specific genres like thriller, comedy, or romance before choosing what products or settings their faces can appear in, from television commercials and video games to short-form dramas.
Users set their own prices based on the type of face, permitted uses, and the number of productions the license covers. Long Lyu, the operations lead at AI-image rights platform New Claw, noted that selling rights to photos gives people a way to earn while continuing their careers offline. He said licensing a person’s face is cheaper than hiring them to perform in person. The platform ha
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Shenzhen-based ActID helps its users manage licensing agreements while monitoring the internet for unauthorized use of registered faces. The company connects users with lawyers who can pursue legal action when necessary. Since launching in March, ActID has registered around 800 users, about 300 of whom have agreed to license their image to AI production. They include professional extras, influencers, and ordinary people with no acting experience. Prices for licensed faces range from 99 to 500 yuan ($15 to $74) per episode, with ActID taking a 10% commission.
Camille Yan, ActID’s chief marketing officer, explained that producers want attractive faces for lead roles but also need distinctive ones like elderly people. She added that AI-generated dramas do not require acting ability anyway; the faces serve as source materials. This business model attempts to solve a problem that has plagued the industry: unauthorized face-swapping. In China, the challenges have long gone beyond public figures. Ordinary people are increasingly discovering their own faces starring in AI-generated dramas they never agreed to appear in.
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Over 95% of the total 128,000 microdramas released in China in the first three months of this year used AI in the production. These ultrashort, vertical-format video series are a multibillion-dollar industry. ByteDance’s AI drama platform Hongguo was accused by two influencers of stealing and altering their faces using AI without consent. The Chinese minidrama, which earned more than 40 million views, was taken down. ByteDance, which also owns Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, has also removed more than 85,000 videos involving unauthorized AI-generated reproduction of people’s faces and voices since the beginning of 2026.
The legal gray area
AI-generated videos and images have sparked concerns about intellectual-property violations. In the U.S., disputes have largely centered on celebrities, with actors such as Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johansson warning about unauthorized AI versions of themselves. In China, the challenges have long gone beyond public figures. Ordinary people are increasingly discovering their own faces starring in AI-generated dramas they never agreed to appear in.
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21-year-old Shanghai-based model Xu Fang has filed a legal claim against a Chinese fashion brand after alleging it used his face on products he never modeled. He would never sell the rights to his own face. “If I license my face, I have no idea how AI might eventually change it or whether it could portray me in degrading ways,” Fang said. These platforms argue they are providing a solution to the intellectual property disputes arising from AI-generated videos, but the market remains unsettled.
Yile Deng, a Beijing-based lawyer who has handled AI-related portrait rights cases, believes the emergence of a business model for selling rights to facial images has been a positive step toward establishing commercial and legal frameworks for all parties involved. Yet she expects the platforms will be unable to eliminate the broader risks posed by AI. Once a person’s facial data enters an AI marketplace, users may effectively lose long-term control over how their biometric identity is used. The platforms also cannot prevent unauthorized face-swapping, illegal data collection, or future AI training using the uploaded images. The most apparent problem remains the unclear scope of authorization. Many agencies are still paying people just a few dozen dollars to collect facial data, but the licensing terms are often so vague that it is impossible to know who will ultimately use the likeness, or for what purpose.