The Australian international has authorized AI digital doppelgangers, and athletes have turned on portrait rights to commercialize AI.澳国脚授权 AI 数字分身，运动员开启肖像权 AI 商业化

IT House news on October 25th, the Australian national men's football team star walked in the spacious atrium, looking straight at the camera, football shoes stepped on the smooth concrete floor, and footsteps echoed around. Suddenly, he turned into four digital doppelgangers, each scattered and reappearing in different scenes around the world. IT House noticed that the video, which was spread on social platforms, was a fake image generated by artificial intelligence, but the prototype of the video, Cristian Volpato, a 22-year-old footballer, himself authorized the production of the content, and he is also the latest professional athlete to monetize his AI portrait. Dressed in a white linen suit, Volpato's “digital doppelganger” stepped on the beach and turned to the camera, with the limestone sea pillars of the Twelve Apostles' Rock behind him. Another doppelganger wears a jersey and appears on a giant digital billboard. There is also a doppelganger who puts together a grey suit in front of a mirror with a smile on his face. The new company created the video specifically to act as an AI portrait licensing agent for professional athletes. Industry experts believe that this is just a microcosm of an emerging online industry that may rewrite the future of portrait rights and sports content. Gaming companies, broadcasters and brands are increasingly using athletes' images in AI-generated content without permission, and some players have begun to take the initiative to defend their rights. In mid-September, Volpato, who plays for Sassuolo Club in the Italian first division, reached an agreement with Callandor, a California-based company, to authorize the use of their AI portraits. Under this agreement, Carando is exclusively in possession of Volpato's digital identity, voice, biometric data, and track performance data. The company works with brands to monetize and share his AI portraits, while blocking content without his permission. Carando co-founder Michael Fisk said in an interview with the Guardian Australia in Los Angeles that their business is to create a “digital doppelgänger.” “Christian has been training, competing,” Fisk said, “but with a little free time, he probably wants to leave it to his family and friends, so he misses a lot of brand cooperation opportunities.” “With my permission, brands can use a digital doppelganger 24/7. Launched in February, Carando currently has few signed athletes, including Brazilian footballer Jorginho and American sailor Chris Poole. The promotion is still in the pilot phase, but the company is exploring a lot of possibilities beyond traditional advertising. Fisk, a former Sony Pictures and MGM executive, mentioned that he could use AI to generate audiobook narrations in foreign languages. The team is also developing an app that lets fans and athletes interact exclusively with their digital counterparts. “At the end of the day, what athletes want most is to communicate one-on-one with their fans,” Fisk said. He envisions developing a soccer training app guided in real time by Volpato's digital doppelganger. “The system recognizes that I stopped the ball incorrectly, and the doppelganger tells me, ‘You should do this, do this, do this,’” Fisk said. “There's no way Volpato himself could have coached so many people one-on-one. The agreement between Volpato and Carando is a cutting-edge attempt in the field of AI portrait licensing, but he is not the first athlete to embrace the technology. In June, Brazilian star Neymar licensed his AI portrait to a Chinese entertainment platform, which released a short video during the World Cup. At the same time that such projects are being implemented, governments around the world are starting to develop rules for the regulation of AI infrastructure. At present, there are no clauses related to AI in the player contracts of major Australian sports leagues. Technological developments will not wait for regulation to catch up. Fisker says his digital doppelgangers are blurring the boundaries between real and fake content. "Especially when watching on a mobile phone, the appearance and texture of the two are almost indistinguishable, and it is becoming more and more difficult to distinguish between true and false.“ It's a race, ”says William Sanders, who started Hyperknown, a small startup in Sydney, and is pushing for similar licensing partnerships. He said that athletes gradually realized that if they did not take the initiative to monetize their AI portraits, others would use them for profit. Earlier this month, the Australian Football League (AFL) asked partner bookmaker Sportsbet to stop using AI portraits without players' permission. The incident was triggered by a complaint from the players' union, which is debating whether to develop stricter rules. “The Sportsbet story speaks volumes about what happens when businesses and technology run ahead of informed consent,” Sanders said. “Walpato represents another option: to take the power into one's own hands before someone else is free to dispose of one's portrait. We're witnessing a race to see what technology can do and what users are really empowered to do." Many players in the Australian sports industry, including content creators, bookmakers, broadcasters and athletes themselves, have begun to embrace this technology. Earlier this month, Australian cricketer Travis Head shot an ad for the broadcast platform Kayo. He joked that his AI clone had already finished filming this advertisement, and then cut the footage of him flying on a kingfisher. Brand endorsement is already an important source of income for athletes, and many people can get millions of dollars worth of contracts. It is unclear whether brands are willing to pay the same high fees as real people for AI doppelgangers. Sanders' company is just getting started, but he sees tremendous opportunity here. He envisions AI doppelgangers taking goods in a foreign language in a country that athletes have never visited before. “Future trust logos will not just say ‘Generated by AI,’” he said of the social platforms, “but ‘Made with my permission.’“ AI can produce a steady stream of content, but it can't fake a person's authorization. This is becoming a new business requirement. “Multiple interests are entangled,” says Jonathan Harlan, an intellectual property law expert at Southern Cross University, arguing that the rise of AI portrait brokers is the “logical next step” in this fast-growing global market. From a legal point of view, this emerging industry is intertwined with various rights and interests and needs to be carefully clarified. "Recording, artwork, and video footage are themselves protected by copyright, but copyright presupposes the existence of a human author, and the work contains independent and creative human input," Harlan said. "Simple AI replicas are not covered by copyright protection." Public figures and athletes do have protections that prevent others from using their images and voices to create AI content without permission. But such counterfeiting laws require parties to be able to prove that they have suffered financial losses. However, this has not stopped the proliferation of deep fake content, and the effects of off-the-shelf tools have become more and more realistic. Last month, Britain launched an initiative involving some of the world's top soccer players, including Cole Palmer and Lucy Browns, to voice their concerns about deep fake content, while noting that regulation is hard to curb. This initiative is supported by Fifpro, the Global Players' Union. Earlier this year, an offshore casino used in-depth fake videos of Manchester United player Bruno Fernandez in its advertisements. Of course, not all unauthorized deepfakes are necessarily undesirable. Fisk believes that it would be counterproductive to crack down on fan creations made by AI. “You certainly don't want fans to use your image to bind you to a brand that you don't endorse at all, or to make you say things you would never say,” he said. “When it comes to things like religion and drugs, you have to be very careful. It's complicated, but the opportunities are staggering." It's just that in this new field, it is difficult to predict what the consequences will be in the future.