The rapid rise of AI-generated content in China has spawned a novel and deeply revealing business model: the face rental economy. As Rest of World reports, as traditional drama production declines, advertising budgets shrink, and luxury brands begin shifting to AI-generated content, platforms are emerging that allow ordinary people to license their likenesses for use in AI-generated microdramas. This new revenue stream is creating a formalized market for human appearance in the age of synthetic media, and raising complex questions about identity, consent, and the future of creative labor.
This trend is largely a response to the rampant unauthorized use of people’s faces in AI videos, which has led to numerous copyright disputes and takedowns. China’s 18 billion dollar microdrama boom has been accompanied by a wave of AI tools that can convincingly swap faces, alter voices, and generate entirely synthetic performances, often without the knowledge or consent of the individuals whose likenesses are used. By formalizing the process, platforms like New Claw and ActID are attempting to bring order to the chaotic frontier of AI content creation.
China’s regulatory environment has been slow to keep pace with these developments. While the government has issued guidelines on AI-generated content and deepfake disclosure, enforcement remains inconsistent, and the platforms facilitating unauthorized face use have faced limited consequences. The emergence of face licensing marketplaces represents a market-driven attempt to fill this regulatory gap, creating economic incentives for consent where legal requirements have so far failed to compel it.
The Mechanics of Face Licensing
On New Claw, users can sell licenses for their faces and specify the types of content they are comfortable appearing in — TV commercials, games, short thrillers, or romances. They can set their own prices, which currently range from $15 (approximately 100 RMB) to $700 per episode, depending on their “face type,” permitted uses, and the number of works they agree to appear in. The platform allows producers to search databases by gender, age, and highly specific categories like “approachable women,” “wild types,” or “supermodels,” and to narrow candidates by genre.
Long Lyu, operations lead at New Claw, explained the economic rationale plainly: “Whether actors and models choose to license their faces on our platform or not, AI has already disrupted the industry. Selling the rights to their photos gives them a way to earn, while continuing their careers offline.” He noted that it is significantly cheaper for producers to license faces than to hire human actors, particularly as traditional drama production budgets have been squeezed by the AI transition. Registered users include extras, influencers, and ordinary people with no acting experience whatsoever, a democratization of the entertainment economy that simultaneously devalues the traditional skills of professional performers.
Managing Rights and Preventing Theft
The need for these platforms was underscored by recent controversies. ByteDance’s AI drama platform, Hongguo, was criticized for stealing and altering the faces of two influencers without permission to create a drama that was viewed over 40 million times before being removed. In response, ByteDance has reportedly removed more than 85,000 videos since early 2026 that used AI to generate and duplicate faces and voices without consent, a scale of enforcement that illustrates both the severity of the problem and the difficulty of policing it.
ActID, a competitor to New Claw, focuses heavily on rights management. It assists users with license agreements, monitors the internet for unauthorized use of registered faces, and connects users with lawyers if legal action is necessary. Since its launch in March 2026, ActID has seen approximately 800 registrations, with about 300 users agreeing to license their likenesses for AI production. To date, two productions have licensed the faces of about 10 people through ActID, with fees ranging from 99 yuan to 500 yuan per episode, with ActID taking a 10% commission.
Camille Yan, Chief Marketing Officer at ActID, highlighted the shifting priorities in AI production: “Producers want attractive faces for lead roles, but they also need distinctive ones like elderly people. AI-generated dramas don’t require acting ability anyway; the faces serve as source materials.” This candid assessment captures the profound transformation underway in China’s entertainment industry, one in which the human body is being disaggregated into licensable components, and where the value of a face is increasingly determined by its visual utility to an algorithm rather than the talent behind it.
The face rental economy also raises deeper questions about consent, exploitation, and the long-term consequences of normalizing the commodification of personal appearance. Critics argue that the pricing structure, which can be as low as $15 per episode, undervalues the contribution of individuals whose likenesses are used to generate content that may be viewed by millions. Proponents counter that it creates income opportunities for people who would otherwise have no access to the entertainment industry.
As Gigazine has also reported, China’s AI content economy is maturing rapidly, and the face rental market may prove to be an early indicator of how synthetic media will reshape the economics of human identity itself — and a preview of the regulatory and ethical debates that will inevitably follow.