Over the past few years, I’ve worked my way through a myriad of lifestyle, health and fashion “fixes.” I’ve abandoned UPFs, renounced red meat, gone organic, flirted with 0% beer, invested in a machine to grow herbs, bought a genius multitool for adventures, and succumbed to a “transformer” bag that promises to shift from backpack to briefcase “in seconds”, to make life more “efficient and enjoyable.” I have also downloaded an impressive number of apps, mostly to solve problems I didn’t know I had.

Published: 16 February 2026
Author: Andrew Brennan

Predictably, none of this has transformed my life. I am not fitter, calmer, more stylish nor more productive. The herb machine sits idle, the multitool remains in its box, I’ve enthusiastically welcomed back red meat (and beer), organic shopping proved too expensive, and the “transformer” bag has delivered neither efficiency nor enjoyment. The only measurable differences are a lighter bank balance and the hours surrendered to social media, absorbing life advice from younger strangers - which, regrettably, accounts for much of the above.

Increasingly, this is the world we live in: one in which influencers act as guides to everything from fitness regimes to financial planning. Their recommendations shape consumer behaviour, while their faces, voices, personalities and even AI‑generated avatars have become valuable commercial assets in their own right.

Nowhere is this shift more apparent than in the recent $975 million deal involving TikTok star Khaby Lame, who has effectively licensed not just his likeness, but a full AI‑generated digital replica of himself. The transaction, which includes rights to a “digital twin” capable of mimicking his voice, expressions and online persona, signals a further shift in how image rights are understood and monetised within the creator economy.

For the purchaser, Rich Sparkle Holdings, the attraction is obvious: Lame’s AI avatar can appear in multiple languages, across multiple time zones, producing content around the clock without the constraints of human availability. Projections suggest that the digital version of Lame could help generate billions in annual revenue.

But the deal also exposes a rapidly expanding set of legal and commercial questions relating to the protection and exploitation of image rights, especially where AI is involved. Historically, image rights concerned narrower issues: the use of photographs, lookalikes in advertising or celebrity endorsements. Today, the scope is far broader.

For influencers, this raises difficult questions around control, consent and longevity. Who owns the data used to train an AI model to behave “like” them? What happens if the avatar endorses something they disagree with, continues to appear commercially long after rights have expired, or is convincingly misused in a deepfake? For lawyers, the challenge is intensifying, as legislation struggles to keep pace. Nowhere is this more evident than in the UK, which lacks a comprehensive statutory framework on image rights, leaving practitioners to stitch together passing off, data protection, privacy, copyright and contract law to address scenarios legislators never envisaged.

The Khaby Lame deal highlights a wider reality: influencers are no longer simply creators, but global brands whose identity can be licensed, replicated and monetised across multiple channels, often at a scale once reserved for major corporations. As their economic footprint expands, so too does the case for modernising the law on image rights, particularly in the UK where calls for reform are growing louder.

And for anyone wondering how we arrived at this point, it’s worth reflecting on all those hours spent scrolling through social feeds and “life hacks.” Influencers didn’t simply rise - we invited them in, one ‘like’ at a time.