An up-and-coming creator gets offered their first brand deal. It’s enough money to pay their rent, but not nearly enough to hire a lawyer to look over the contract, so they sign it. A few months later, they see their face on a billboard or in a commercial without their consent.
This isn’t a hypothetical, says lawyer Michelle May O’Neil, whom I met at SXSW in Austin, Texas, after her panel, “Who Owns Me? Legal War Over Identity in the Creator Economy.” O’Neil is a nationally recognized lawyer, litigation strategist, and expert on NIL (name, image, likeness) topics, and she’s warning creators to pay very close attention to contracts with brands.
However, it’s not just shady contracts and legalese that can strip creators of their likeness. In the AI era, creators are also facing AI clones and deepfakes that steal their voice and image.
During her panel, O’Neil explained how creators can lose control of their online identity, and some of her examples took me by surprise. She highlighted the case of Kat and Mike Stickler, the married TikTok influencers who ended up in a bitter feud over their shared social media accounts during a messy divorce.
“As a lawyer, we say fair is a four-letter word, so there's not really a fair concept in the law. There's just the law, and it applies,” O’Neil said. “The tech is moving so fast, and the world is moving so fast, that it's difficult because there's not a lot of law that protects you, but we want to do the best we can."
So, what do creators need to know about their name, image, and likeness, and how can they protect themselves?
Please note that the content of this article does not constitute legal advice. Consult your own lawyer before making any big decisions.
It’s not identity theft if you give it away. Avoid the perpetuity trap.
When signing contracts with brands or social media companies, O’Neil warns creators to look for specific contract language that companies might try to sneak into a contract:
Perpetual / in perpetuity
All media now known or later developed
Derivative works
Sublicensable
Irrevocable
O’Neil says an offending clause might look like this: “Creator grants Brand a perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable right to use Creator's name, image, likeness and voice in all media now known or later developed.”
“If you sign a bad contract and you don't read it, and you kind of do what one of the girls at the bar the other night said [she did] to me. She said, ‘Well, I mean, I just signed the contract they gave me. Because who am I? Like, if I don't sign what they give me, I'm not going to get the brand deal.’ And I get that, but she signed away a lot of rights.”
I heard this same sentiment in a separate SXSW panel featuring YouTube icons Rhett and Link.
In a panel on the creator economy, Rhett McLaughlin said many young creators feel like they can’t say no to brand deals at first.
“If you're a brand, you might be dealing with a lot of people who are young and inexperienced, even if they might be working with somebody who's representing them,” Rhett McLaughlin said. “And then you've got, you know, people who are either working in another job and beginning doing some creating on the side, or they're just young, and $1,000 is like, ‘Oh shit, $1,000, yes! I'm just gonna say yes. Whatever you just asked me to do for $1,000, I'm gonna say yes to it.” And brands know, in a lot of situations, they can go out and just pay 40 different creators $1,000 to get a message out there.”
When I asked O’Neil what kind of recourse someone might have if they sign away rights to their likeness in perpetuity, she had a blunt response.
“If they sign it, they sign it,” O’Neil told me. "I think once you sign it, you're done. That’s why it’s important. And that's why the lawyers for those platforms, that's why they make the big bucks, right?”
Add language to contracts to protect yourself
There are some important steps creators can take when negotiating contracts.
For instance, you could ask for a sunset clause. This way, you’re licensing your likeness for a specific period of time, not “in perpetuity.”
Creators can also ask for additional language rather than demanding brands delete specific clauses.
“Don't fight to delete the clause. Add a clause. So instead of taking out the all media clause, add an exclusion. Add a carve-out. Say, ‘Okay, you can say all media, but I want to say excluding AI-generated or synthetic representations of me.”
And speaking of AI...
Technology moves much faster than the law
We’re living in a world where deepfakes are commonplace. I reported on deepfakes in YouTube Ads depicting celebrities like Oprah and Hoda Kotb, despite all the moderation tech YouTube uses to filter bad ads. Using widely available tools, bad actors can now take a short video clip and create an AI clone of you that can do or say almost anything.
Creators need to be proactive in protecting their likeness from AI clones. Major actors and writers unions have been negotiating for AI protections in contracts with studios, but unfortunately, creators don’t have a union to rely on.
“You know, if you're gonna do an audiobook with Simon & Schuster and they don't want to agree to let you reserve your AI clone of your audio voice, maybe you shouldn't do that deal,” O’Neil said.
Again, you can also ask for specific clauses that carve out an exception for AI clones.
LLCs and trademark law
In addition to bad contracts, O’Neil warned about two other ways creators lose their identity. First, they fail to create a legal entity, such as an LLC, for conducting business. A business entity creates a wall between you and your business asset, aka your likeness and your content.
In addition, some creators fail to trademark their key franchises, trademarks, and ideas. And, crucially, they may also fail to defend their trademark, which can come back to haunt them if they ever do go to court.
Unfortunately, while there are laws in Western countries to protect a creator’s likeness or right of publicity, international protections can be much weaker — or nonexistent.
O’Neil raised the example of a recent AI deepfake video that showed Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt on a rooftop in a non-existent movie. She said Cruise was eventually able to get American companies to take down the video, but it remains online in many places.
And if Cruise, with all of his money and the protections of actors’ unions, can’t protect his likeness, small-time creators have almost no chance at all.
Put the family Instagram account in the pre-nup
Finally, as in the famous divorce case of Kat and Mike Stickler, if you’re creating content with a partner, make sure you have a plan for the dissolution of that partnership. Even if you only appear occasionally in your partner’s content, make sure they don’t retain a right to your likeness in the event of a breakup or divorce.
That might even mean putting your Instagram and TikTok accounts in a pre-nup.
AI is the problem, not the solution
Finally, AI might seem like both the problem and the solution for creators who can’t afford a lawyer. After all, plenty of actual attorneys are now using ChatGPT, even if they shouldn’t be. But O’Neil cautioned creators from relying on AI chatbots for legal advice.
Ultimately, ChatGPT is not a lawyer, and OpenAI has even been sued for practicing law without a license, most recently in March. Asking Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT to review or redline a contract might be tempting, but ultimately, only an actual human lawyer can give you legal advice, as some people have learned the hard way.
We’re living in a brave new AI world, and the creator economy still lacks the regulations that protect businesses in other industries.
So, creators, protect yourself and your likeness, because no one else will.
Some of the quotes in this story have been lightly edited for clarity and grammar.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
