▶ Faces become products in China. The fear of renting out your real face for 10,000 yen per episode and the indelible nature of training data [7/28]

In China, a market for renting out one's face to AI is emerging.

Multiple platforms are paying between $15 and $700 (approx. 2,250 to 105,000 yen) as compensation for the "right to use a face" in AI-generated dramas and advertisements.

Faces are cataloged by gender, age, and style—such as "girl next door" or "rugged"—allowing producers to filter by genre.

Since its launch in March, about 800 people have registered with Shenzhen-based ActID, with about 300 of them consenting to the use of their faces for AI production.

Prices range from 99 to 500 yuan (approx. 2,250 to 11,000 yen) per episode, with a 10% commission fee.

Chengdu-based New Claw has set a minimum price of 500 yuan per image to prevent price collapse.

The backdrop is the rapid expansion of vertical short dramas; over 95% of the 128,000 episodes released between January and March of this year used AI in their production.

What is happening here is a shift in the nature of income. It is changing from a performance fee for time spent acting to a licensing fee for the use of the asset that is one's face.

The filming happens only once, and thereafter, compensation is generated every time it is used.

The operations manager at New Claw states that AI has already disrupted the industry regardless of whether actors and models consent, and that selling the rights to their photos becomes a way to earn money while continuing to work offline.

However, the manager also admits that renting a face is cheaper than hiring the person themselves.

In the United States, the treatment of digital replicas became the biggest point of contention during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild) strike.

The agreed-upon contract requires prior explicit consent for the creation of replicas, and if they are to be used in works or for purposes different from the initial consent, consent must be obtained again, and compensation must be paid each time.

This effectively blocks the practice of "scan once, use forever."

Meanwhile, in Japan, there are no explicit statutory provisions for portrait rights or publicity rights, and they have been protected through the accumulation of judicial precedents.

Moreover, the subjects assumed to be protected have primarily been celebrities.

What stands out in China is that the market for buying and selling emerged before the regulatory framework was established.

What is interesting is the reason why real faces have been assigned a value.

ByteDance's "Hongguo" is China's largest free short-drama app, with 300 million monthly users, and is the biggest distributor of AI-generated content.

Hongguo recently received complaints from viewers stating that "all the AI characters' faces look the same."

In July, the app published guidelines on creating character personas for AI works and has begun cracking down on content with uniform-looking faces.

This comes against a backdrop of successive removals of works that used other people's photos without permission.

Generative AI has a tendency to lean toward the average of its training data, so the more it mass-produces, the more familiar faces appear.

Ironically, the irregularities that AI struggles with are becoming a rare commodity.

This means that older faces or faces with distinct features are the ones that command a price.

The scariest part of a contract to sell your face is that it cannot be undone even if you terminate the agreement.

Chinese lawyers point out that contracts from agencies collecting facial data for a few dozen dollars have vague licensing scopes, making it impossible to tell who is using it or how.

According to reports within China, market rates are around 500 yuan (approx. 10,000 yen) for one year, or up to 1,500 yuan (approx. 30,000 yen) for a full buyout, with students, the elderly, and extras being the primary participants.

What is often overlooked here is that it is technically almost impossible to extract only your own face from a model once it has been trained.

Even after the contract period expires, the face remains within the model.

It is a domain where the term "limited-term license" is, in reality, almost meaningless.

Japan is not immune to this issue either.
On July 27 of this year, a Ministry of Justice study group released draft guidelines outlining civil liability for the unauthorized use of voices and portraits by generative AI.

The content specifies that voices, like portraits, are subject to the "right not to be used without permission" and the right of publicity, with the official version scheduled for release in early August.

Although it has no legal binding force, the fact that the administration has drawn a line without waiting for a accumulation of judicial precedents is worth noting.

This is supported by research from the Japan Association for the Protection of Rights of Publicity (JAPRO).

In the approximately two months since June 2025, 43,483 images and videos suspected of being generated without permission were identified, with an estimated 335 million views on social media and an estimated economic loss of 2 billion to 4.5 billion yen.

However, these guidelines only address the issue of 'do not do this without permission'.

What to do when a market for 'selling with consent' emerges remains untouched.

Moreover, Japan lacks a mechanism for actors to collectively negotiate terms.

Those who will struggle are extras and newcomers who cannot protect themselves with their names.

In China, it has been reported that agencies are bundling clauses for the use of AI portraits when signing contracts with newcomers, setting terms ranging from one to ten years.

There is no guarantee that the same thing will not happen in Japan.