China’s AI boom is creating a new source of income for actors, models and ordinary people: licensing their faces for use in AI-generated videos.
A growing number of platforms are paying between $15 and $700 for a person’s likeness, according to Rest of World . Producers can browse catalogs of faces by age, gender and appearance, including categories such as “girl-next-door” and “supermodel,” before filtering them for genres such as comedy, romance or thrillers.
The demand is being driven partly by China’s booming microdrama industry. These ultrashort vertical shows are designed for smartphones, and China released around 128,000 microdramas in the first three months of 2026. More than 95% used AI somewhere in production.
Shenzhen-based ActID, which launched in March, has registered around 800 users, with about 300 agreeing to license their likenesses for AI productions. So far, two AI dramas have licensed around 10 faces through the service for $15 to $74 per episode, while ActID takes a 10% commission.
ActID says AI productions need both conventionally attractive faces for lead roles and more distinctive appearances, including older people. Since the person does not actually perform the role, the licensed face essentially becomes source material for the AI-generated character.
Another platform, Chengdu-based New Claw, moved into face licensing after AI disrupted its previous production-house business. The company said traditional drama production and advertising budgets declined while even luxury brands began shifting toward AI content. It has set a minimum price of $74 per image to stop users from undercutting each other.
The platforms are also presenting face licensing as a legal alternative to an existing problem: people finding their likenesses in AI content without permission.
Two influencers accused ByteDance’s Hongguo platform of using their faces without consent in an AI drama that received more than 40 million views before being removed. ByteDance says it has taken down more than 85,000 videos involving unauthorized AI recreations of people’s faces or voices since the start of 2026.
Legal disputes are also increasing. The Guangzhou Internet Court has handled around 700 AI-related face-theft cases over the past three years. In March, the Beijing Internet Court ruled that using someone’s likeness in an AI face swap without permission can be illegal even when the resulting image has been altered.
Beijing lawyer Yile Deng said legal face marketplaces could help create clearer commercial rules, but warned that people may lose long-term control of their biometric identity once their images enter these systems.
Platforms cannot guarantee that licensed photos will never be collected illegally, used in unauthorized face swaps or included in future AI training. Deng also warned that some licensing contracts are so vague that users may not know who will eventually use their face or for what purpose.
That risk is enough to put some models off. Shanghai model Xu Fang, 21, is suing a fashion company that he says used his face on products he never modeled. Despite the new licensing platforms, he said he would not sell rights to his own likeness because he could not know how AI might alter or portray him.
There is also no guarantee that face licensing will become a major business. An AI drama director told Rest of World that most productions still use completely synthetic characters because buying a real person’s face is optional. For producers, the final decision may simply come down to cost.
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