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Why the Likeness Confirmation Is Mandatory

Every tool involving a real person's likeness has a mandatory confirmation. What you are actually confirming, where responsibility sits, and the easier route that avoids real people.

This article answers a specific question: when you use custom models, AI Presenter, Drama Ads, Runway Video or dance ads, there's always a checkbox saying "I confirm... likeness rights," and you can't submit without it. What exactly are you confirming, and who carries the responsibility once you have?

Where this gate appears

ToolWhat you're confirming
Creating a custom model profileYou have the model's permission to use their likeness
Creating a digital-human avatarYou have that person's likeness and voice rights
Drama Ads (with your own presenter photo)The likeness is you, or you hold the rights to it
Runway / try-on video (single and batch)The likeness is you, or you hold the rights to it
Dance ads and motion replicationThe reference video is yours or licensed, and contains no unlicensed likeness, music or footage
Product seeding video (with a reference video)The reference video is yours or licensed

For runway videos, batch and single submissions share the one checkbox at the top of the page — ticking it once covers that batch.

This isn't just front-end copy

The front end blocks it, and the backend blocks it again: if the request doesn't carry the confirmation flag, the endpoint rejects it outright, the job never enters the queue, and no credits are deducted. When you create a custom model or a digital-human avatar, the time of confirmation is written into the profile as a record.

What you're actually confirming

  • The face in the output is yours, or you have that person's permission to use their likeness for AI generation and commercial promotion. Digital humans add one layer: their voice is in scope too.
  • Your uploads contain no one else's likeness without permission — including passersby in the background, influencer photos pulled off the internet, and model shots lifted from another store.
  • The permission you hold covers how you actually plan to use it: commercial use, the regions you'll advertise in, the platforms you'll post to, and derivative generation. These four are the ones people most often overlook.

Where responsibility sits

The platform generates based on what you confirmed. It does not review your permission documents on your behalf, and it has no way to verify the rights behind a photograph. You warrant that you hold lawful rights to your material — that's written into the "Accounts and Use" section of the Terms of Service. If a likeness dispute actually arises, it's between you and the person whose likeness was used.

So before you tick the box, keep a record: the release, the message thread, a screenshot of the contract. Store a copy where you can find it.

If you'd rather not involve real people

The route we'd recommend is simply to use AI-generated portraits from the platform. Drama Ads can use an AI presenter generated on the spot — no talent to find, no release to sign — and runway and try-on videos can start from an AI model image. If no real person's photo enters your material, the whole likeness question falls away.

If you want one consistent face across your entire store, create a custom model profile (1-3 reference images) and reuse that same face in later images, which saves the cost of a human model. Note that if the reference images are of a real person, the same permission rules apply as before.

Music licensing is a separate track — see Background music and copyright. Whether the output as a whole can be used commercially is covered in Can I use the output commercially?.

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