Scott Jacqmein charged $ 750 and a trip. In return, she delivered her image for an external agency to make her a Avatar Digital For a year. That avatar has appeared in Tiktok Selling horoscopes, supplements and insurance in Spanish and other languages, although Jacqmein lives in Dallas and has not recorded any of those ads. His face, without his usual beard, continues to circulate in videos generated by artificial intelligence. With the contract he signed, he has no simple ways to stop him.
The man signed a license to use his image for twelve months, without royalties, and without legal representation to advise him. The agreement was not with Tiktok directly, but with an external agency that, According to The New York Timesgathered actors material to create avatars for advertising purposes. At the time, he saw that recording as a professional opportunity. Today, he acknowledges that he did not fully understand how his digital image would be used or in what kind of campaigns would appear.
AI AVATARES: Licenses, Control and Business
Seeing his double digital speaking another language and moving with an expressiveness that is not his was, for Scott Jacqmein, a disconcerting experience. The only real thing in those pieces is the original source: the face and voice that delivered an agency under contract. Although videos include a “Ai-generated”the realism of avatars makes this warning easily pass unnoticed, probably pending as authentic testimonies in the Feed of users.
According to the American newspaper, the Jacqmein avatar is part of a catalog that Tiktok offers companies as an advertising tool. Advertisers can choose between several profiles, age, gender and appearance, and Generate videos directly from the platformno need for filming. These avatars are free for brands and are used in Tiktok advertising service, within a creative suite called Symphony.
Jacqmein does not have clear contractual mechanisms to stop the use of his avatar. The license he signed with the agency was for a year, although it has not been made public at what exact moment of 2024 was formalized. Until this month, he says, his acquaintances continued to warn him that they saw him in Tiktok ads, which suggests that his image is still active in recent campaigns. The actor regrets not having negotiated restrictions on products, languages or environments in which his avatar could be used.
On the left, Scott Jacqmein’s avatar created by AI for ads on Tiktok. On the right, the actor in a real image taken during a walk
Jacqmein’s story is a reflection of the type of situations that may arise in an environment where artificial intelligence It allows to replicate faces and voices easily. We do not know if all agreements of this type are managed the same, but this case shows what can happen when the terms are not clearly defined. In a digital world where opportunities multiply, the consequences of what we sign can also do.
In the prominent image that accompanies this article, the avatar generated by AI appears on the left and the real photography of Jacqmein, on the right.
Images | Scott Jacqmein | Tiktok capture
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