AI likeness licensing, also called identity-based licensing or AI identity licensing, is scoped permission from a real person to use their face or voice in AI-generated content. It connects the agreed rights to production controls, output evidence and current permission status.
Two things have to be true at once for that sentence to mean anything. The person has to have agreed in advance, to a scope they actually chose. And somebody who was not in the room has to be able to check that a specific piece of content was covered by that agreement, without taking anyone's word for it.
Most of what gets called consent in AI content only does the first half. A signed release in a folder says permission existed somewhere. It cannot tell you whether the video in front of you was covered by it.
Identity-based licensing treats the real person and their permission as the root of the workflow. It does not infer authority from a public image, an uploaded file, access to a model, a platform account or a synthetic-media label. The permission must identify the person, the buyer, the intended use and the conditions under which production may proceed.
For a buyer, that creates three separate checks: whether the person authorized the campaign, whether the production request stayed inside the signed scope, and whether the released file can be connected to the approved route. One contract or provenance label cannot silently answer all three.
A licence is not a yes or a no. It is a scope, agreed before anything is generated:
Duration is the one that separates a licence from a sale. A brand never buys an identity. When the licence ends, their right to use that person ends with it.
| Not this | Because |
|---|---|
| A model release | A release is a document about a person. A licence is attached to specific content, so you can check the content rather than trust a filing cabinet. |
| A stock likeness | Stock is bought once and used anywhere. A licence is scoped to a brand, campaign, format, territory and duration, and it expires. |
| A deepfake takedown service | A takedown is what you do after something unauthorized exists. A licence is the record that makes authorized use provable in the first place. We are the legal path, not the police. |
| A watermark | A watermark can say content is synthetic. It does not say who agreed to appear in it, under what terms, or whether those terms have expired. |
| A blockchain | Entries are hash-chained and anchored to an external timestamp authority. That gives you an independently checkable record without a token or a chain. |
A supported registered release can carry a receipt linking the person, asset, licence, production event and output evidence. That chain lets a reviewer check what the record establishes without pretending that a receipt proves an unregistered use or decides legal validity.
The credential supplies content provenance: checkable information about the file's origin and history. Provenance and permission remain separate. The provenance record helps connect evidence to the file, while the licence records whether the person authorized the use.
The verifier is public. It runs on your own machine, with no account and no dependencies, and the source of the verifier is published too, so a sceptic can check the checker instead of trusting the result. It returns three outcomes rather than two: pass, fail, and unknown. Unknown is reported as unknown, because a verifier that rounds uncertainty into a yes is worse than no verifier at all.
Bring a campaign briefCheck a receipt yourself
A model release sits in someone's files and says permission was given. It cannot tell you whether the specific video in front of you was covered by it, and nobody outside the two parties can check it. An identity licence is scope-bound and machine-readable, and each supported registered release can carry a receipt that links the content back to the licence.
No, and the difference is consent and evidence. A deepfake is made without permission and carries nothing that proves anything about where it came from. A supported registered release can connect the person's prior agreement and defined scope to the output record without claiming that unregistered uses are covered.
The person does. Their face and voice stay theirs. Brands license, they do not buy.
The right to use the person ends. Because the duration is part of the licence and the receipt points back to it, an expired use is checkable by anyone rather than being an argument between two parties.
Take it to the verifier. One command, no account, and it runs on your machine.
No. Nobody is onboarded, cloned or listed before they say yes, and consent of record is a signed agreement plus a passed identity check, not a recorded verbal statement. A signed document has a hash a third party can check. A video of somebody saying yes does not.
They cover different identity elements and production risks. A face licence should define the visual treatment, reference assets and approved production route. A voice licence should define the script, meaning, pronunciation, language and synthesis route. A campaign using both needs both elements inside the same signed scope.
Read the plain-language definitions of AI face licensing and AI voice licensing, or review the brand buyer workflow.