Say what you need about KISS, they found out branding lengthy earlier than everybody else. The band realized they weren’t simply 4 guys who wrote iconic songs. Nonetheless, as an alternative, they have been a collective concept that the pictures of the Demon, Star Little one, Spaceman, and Cat might stay on ceaselessly as a result of they didn’t simply stay throughout the music; they turned a multi-dimensional entity that offered every part from condoms to coffins.
And now, as creators transfer into branding themselves, the identical sorts of conversations are occurring: what am I within the larger scheme of my picture, and what do I signify as an entire?
Think about licensing your chuckle to a model. Think about your AI twin internet hosting a podcast whilst you’re asleep. Think about your title, picture, and voice outliving you, nonetheless posting, nonetheless promoting. So now, a creator’s title isn’t simply their popularity; it’s mental property.
The place’s the road between particular person and product?
Branding Your self right into a Enterprise
As of 2024, over 22,000 people filed emblems for his or her names globally — a 300% improve from 2019 (supply: WIPO). Taking a web page from MrBeast and Kim Kardashian, increasingly creators are trademarking their names, signaling a brand new paradigm in IP legislation.
As platforms like TikTok and YouTube flip on a regular basis individuals into family names, proudly owning your title turns into greater than vainness — it’s protection. Towards impostors. Towards fakes. Towards dangerous offers. The rise of content material banks and AI avatars doesn’t simply complicate property legislation — it raises ontological questions on selfhood in a post-biological age.
When creators trademark their names, they suppose forward:
It’s the enterprise mannequin of the fashionable age.
And in a world the place anybody’s face or voice will be duplicated with a line of code, trademarking your title turns into digital armor. From a authorized standpoint, it is sensible — copyright infringement carries much more weight than a imply DM to somebody pretending to be you. A cease-and-desist comes backed by a authorized framework with actual penalties.
The Monetization of Likeness
AI clones, voice licensing, and digital avatars are shortly changing into a part of the creator financial system’s toolkit. As an alternative of burning out on content material calendars, creators are actually utilizing AI voiceovers of themselves to scale output with out displaying up on daily basis. TikTokers are cloning their voices to relate movies, automate commentary, and maintain engagement excessive — even whereas they sleep.
Artists like Grimes have gone additional, permitting followers to make use of her AI-generated voice in unique songs, with a easy 50/50 royalty cut up. It’s a daring transfer that blurs the road between creator and shopper, turning her voice into an open-source model.
This strategy to AI isn’t simply area of interest experimentation — it’s changing into a part of a broader pattern. A 2023 Deloitte research discovered that 18% of Gen Z creators have explored “artificial” model partnerships that use their AI-generated likenesses.
Experiments like these push in opposition to what’s genuine: does the digital model of ourselves that we’ve licensed out to be a part of the artistic course of depend as “us” collaborating?
Digital avatars signify a scalable, licensable model of identification with implications for mental property legislation, possession, and the way forward for what it means to be “actual” on-line. As MIT’s Sherry Turkle says, “It’s not sufficient to be genuine. One should now carry out authenticity.”
A deeper query arises: if a technological model of ourselves generates our content material, are we nonetheless those creating it?
Dying Isn’t the Finish: Property Planning for Your Picture
Notoriously, Mr. Pokee the hedgehog died whereas his proprietor ramped up an entire new hedgehog storyline, which dives into posthumous monetization, one other side of KISS’ plan to eternally maintain their model going.
We’re coming into an period the place your digital ghost could outlive your bodily one — incomes and influencing.
Some creators aren’t simply planning for the following content material drop, they’re making ready for the afterlife. A rising quantity are constructing “content material banks” with:
- Archives of pre-recorded movies
- AI-trained voice fashions
- Avatar scripts
These digital belongings will be scheduled, reassembled, or algorithmically refreshed, permitting influencers, educators, and entertainers to take care of a presence — and even develop an viewers — posthumously. What was once like a Blade Runner plotline is now a strategic monetary and marketability selection. For creators whose model is their enterprise, this preparation ensures that dying doesn’t imply disappearing from the feed.
All of it feels very dystopian, however does it deal with the ever-present vestige of Walt Disney as he looms over his firm virtually sixty years after his dying?
This darkish pattern is fueling a parallel business: digital property planning. Specialised corporations now assist creators arrange wills not only for cash however for mental property, together with voice rights, likeness utilization, and content material licensing.
Some even supply “AI will” providers, permitting shoppers to dictate how their digital self will get managed: who can use it, for the way lengthy, and underneath what phrases. It’s a pure evolution of legacy planning in a time when an individual’s on-line presence can outlast and out-earn their bodily one.
Emotional + Moral Toll
In case your face will be licensed, your voice replicated, and your title monetized, what’s left that’s simply…yours? Is that this a brand new stage of capitalistic enterprise unlocked? After your dying, how is there a summation of desires? When you’re lengthy gone, what’s to say a money-hungry great-grandkid received’t make your avatar promote sizzling canine when the residing particular person would by no means dream of such a factor?
In accordance with Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI, 62% of tech-forward shoppers now consider their on-line presence will outlive their bodily one and need a say in dealing with it.
How does somebody personal their picture and likeness with out being owned by notion? This introduces a paradox: As Jack Kornfield as soon as put it in decoding the Buddha’s teachings, “The difficulty is, you suppose you might have time.” In a 2023 report from the Digital Legacy Affiliation, 45% of millennial creators mentioned they’ve thought-about formal plans for his or her digital afterlife, however solely 8% have taken steps.
As Walter Benjamin warned, artwork dangers dropping its aura within the age of mechanical copy. At present, the identical will be mentioned of identification — filtered, replicated, and rendered in code.
For Sale: The Self. All the time Out there.
The road between identification and model dissolves as creators more and more monetize their voices, faces, and personalities. The strain to at all times be “on” now extends even after dying, with AI-generated avatars and voice clones providing the promise and burden of perpetual presence. A 2023 survey by YouGov discovered that 41% of Gen Z creators really feel strain to take care of a digital persona that doesn’t mirror their real-life identification.
And Patreon’s Creator Economic system report finds that burnout amongst full-time influencers has risen 27% year-over-year. As digital selfhood turns into commodified, creators are already reporting heightened anxiousness round boundaries, consent, and the sense that their personhood is not fully theirs however a licensed asset distributed throughout platforms.
This evolving panorama calls for considerate coverage. Ought to there be authorized guardrails round how an individual’s likeness will get used, who can authorize it, and whether or not that consent will be revoked?
A 2024 research by the Berkman Klein Heart at Harvard discovered that solely 12% of platforms supply clear opt-out choices for AI coaching on user-generated content material (UGC). As these instruments advance, the authorized and moral frameworks surrounding digital identification should develop alongside them. What rights ought to people retain over their algorithmic variations, and who protects these rights after they’re gone?
As Hannah Arendt as soon as warned, “The purpose of totalitarian training has by no means been to instill convictions however to destroy the capability to type any.” If we relinquish management over the formation and use of our digital selves, we danger dropping the capability to outline who we’re.
Past Dystopia: The Different Facet
What does it imply for society that we’ve grown snug with our identities residing on as code? There’s one thing misplaced after we not marvel what George Carlin would consider our present second; mysteries that stay unsolved as a result of they exist solely in what the creator made throughout their lifetime.
How can we steadiness particular person possession of self in opposition to the public’s want for digital immortality?
“Whereas many see the commercialization of digital identification as dystopian, there’s one other perspective to think about. For creators with bodily limitations, power sickness, or these going through systemic obstacles, AI avatars supply continuity and alternative,” says Dr. Maya Indira, digital ethics researcher at MIT Media Lab. “I’ve labored with artists who can solely create sporadically as a consequence of well being circumstances — their AI extensions permit their voice to stay current even throughout flare-ups. The query isn’t whether or not we should always cease this know-how, however how we will guarantee it empowers fairly than exploits creators.”
As KISS’ Gene Simmons put it bluntly, “I’m not within the music enterprise. I’m within the licensing enterprise.” He continued, “KISS is a model title. We’re like a can of Coca-Cola. You recognize what you’re gonna get.”
And guess who’s engaged on their AI-built avatar present for generations to return? You guessed it.
They actually will Rock and Roll All Evening and Get together Each Day.