Metaphysic CEO files for copyright of his own AI likeness

Metaphysic CEO Tom Graham runs a company that creates authorized “deep fakes” of people using AI. And today he said he is making history today as the first person to submit for copyright registration his AI likeness with the U.S. Copyright Office.

As the industry leader in creating hyperreal content powered by generative AI, Metaphysic champions individual ownership and control of their AI likenesses and biometric data.

By leveraging legal institutions and existing law and regulation, Graham, through this submission, demonstrates the increasingly fine line between reality and computer-generated media as he and Metaphysic seek to create, for the first time, a new bundle of intellectual property rights that must be available to any individual in the future.

“Generative AI can create content that looks and feels real, and regular people’s avatars can be inserted into content by third parties without their consent. This is not right, and we should never lose control over our identity, privacy or biometric data,” said Graham, in a statement. “I hope that copyright registration of the photo-realistic AI-generated version of myself will increase my ability to take action against unauthorized AI impersonations of myself in the future. Today’s law supports that. We all need to work hard to ensure that future laws and regulations strengthen individual’s rights and protect vulnerable members of society.”

Producing the AI likeness required Graham to record a three-minute video of himself on a mobile phone to capture his likeness, voice, and biometric data. Once received, Metaphysic utilized its hyperreal AI tools to create an AI avatar of present-day Graham. Graham put a lot of effort into creating and curating the training dataset and working with the team at Metaphysic to hone in on the AI look he wanted. Beyond iterating on the look of his AI likeness, Graham and the team also took steps to composite and merge the AI model output into the underlying video to create an accurate representation of a hyperrealistic AI version of himself.

Maintaining data ownership and protecting individuals’ rights will be critical to the mass adoption of AI
technologies, the company said. This initial process of registering copyright in Graham’s AI likeness provides a framework for how other individuals and public figures can take steps to protect their identities, performances and brands.

The company covered its butt. It said the information provided in this statement, including future comments and commentary concerning the subject matter does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. All information in this statement is for general informational purposes only. It is both Graham and Metaphysic’s interpretation of current law in the United States that Graham’s AI likeness is a man-made work that qualifies for copyright protection within the meaning of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, as amended, and accordingly, registrable with the U.S. Copyright Office.

However, Metaphysic noted it is not clear how laws and regulations will develop in the future or the extent to which registering copyright in an AI likeness will give individuals rights and remedies against third parties that infringe such copyright. Graham and Metaphysic hope that his actions advance the evolving discussion surrounding privacy and individual rights in the context of rapidly advancing generative AI technologies that are becoming increasingly realistic and indistinguishable from reality.

Recently named the official generative AI partner for Miramax’s forthcoming feature film “Here” and a strategic partner of Creative Artists Agency (CAA), Metaphysic’s cutting-edge proprietary technology has positioned the company as the premiere partner for the biggest names in Hollywood and content creation. Metaphysic’s team of machine learning researchers and generative AI pioneers are focused on building an ethical web3 economy where any person can own and control their biometric data while unlocking the future of creativity.

Since 2018, the team behind Metaphysic has been the driving force behind the mass popularization of hyperreal synthetic media via its @DeepTomCruise channel and performances on AGT.

In a video, Graham said the company is creating an AI representation of him that will be an AI avatar and it will be clearly recognizable as him.

“Even if the appearance of my AI representation of myself changes dramatically, or if I change my hair or add creative features, my intention is to create an AI version of myself that embodies the essence of who I am as a person, and that this video is designed to capture enough of my unique biometric data, including image and audio data, in order to generate a data set will be used to train the AI models that will in turn create the realistic AI representation of myself,” he said.

He noted that all of the AI models that are used to create both visual and audio AI versions of himself have been generated for him at his direction by the company. But he noted he personally owns the video of himself that was generated by an AI.

“I also own the input data that has been used to train the AI models that have been used to create the AI version of my image and my voice,” Graham said. “The AI models have been trained from scratch using a data set that I own, that depicts my image and voice. Even though the essential elements of how I look would be apparent under any conditions. I’ve chosen the lighting conditions, and the camera setup to reflect how I would like my realistic AI avatar to look.”