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CAA and YouTube announced a joint partnership that will give talent across Hollywood, sports, and the creator economy tools to manage their AI likeness and quickly take down unauthorized deepfakes.
The Big Picture: Public figures, celebrities, and creative talent have been playing Whac-A-Mole to remove deepfakes of themselves from social media while also dealing with a tech industry that’s played fast and loose with the rules — both legally and ethically — around copyright and likeness. The YouTube/CAA deal shows that waiting for a legal framework to figure things out may be too little, too late for two industries that like to move fast.
Behind the Scenes: The partnership between the biggest talent agency and the biggest video platform in the world could set a strong precedent that protects human creativity.
- YouTube said that “top YouTube creators, creative professionals, and other leading partners representing talent” will begin testing “early-stage” AI identification and management tools over the coming months.
- The tools will be able to surface videos across the platform that use their likeness and then request them to be promptly taken down.
- We also wouldn’t be surprised if YouTube develops a way for talent to easily monetize their digital likeness for brand partnerships or exclusive YouTube advertising — in collaboration with CAA’s in-house digital asset vault.
The Future: Disruption from AI is coming to the entertainment industry whether they like it or not, partly because the cat’s already out of the bag in Hollywood, most likely resulting in efficiencies (and layoffs) across production, post-production, and VFX. CAA welcomes that.
What CAA doesn’t welcome is anything that hurts its bread and butter of top-talent earnings (and their commissions). That’s why CEO Bryan Lourd rightly went to the mat for client Scarlett Johansson. If AI can be managed as a net positive for clients — both in their creative and financial lives — that’s something CAA and all of Hollywood will gladly embrace.
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