Digital doubles are here. What does AI mean for creator-brand collaborations?

New Delhi: MrBeast recently said content creators are living in “scary times” as AI races into the creator economy.

He is not wrong. AI has turned video into software—cheap, fast, and effectively infinite. OpenAI’s Sora 2 now ships with a consumer app and a “cameos” feature that lets a consenting person’s likeness and voice drop into any scene. YouTube has followed with a 2025 stack built on Veo-powered generation, Edit with AI first drafts, podcast-to-video clipping, and broader likeness detection.

But how will this impact creators’ incomes, platforms, and branded content?

The result seems clear: feeds will flood, CPMs will tighten, and creator brand deals will get a reality check. This is the era of the digital double, where your face and voice can appear in any scene and any language. Great for scale, brutal for sameness.

The supply shock is here, but the moat moves to trust

“AI video is about to flood the market — cheap, abundant, and high-quality. Naturally, this will compress CPMs and flatten brand deal values because the supply of content will explode,” said Ramya Ramachandran, Founder and CEO, Whoppl. 

Her point is already visible: Sora’s public launch and iOS app lower production costs and put high-end synthesis in more hands, while YouTube’s new tools compress edit time and multiply versions for Shorts. More supply usually means pressure on mid-tier pricing.

Ramachandran’s counterbalance is where the human edge survives. “Human creators won’t vanish; they’ll shift from volume to value. The real moat now becomes trust, emotion, and community. The creators who own audience relationships will find lifelines in memberships, live formats, IRL events, commerce, and IP licensing. Basically, what’s scarce is what becomes premium.”

Do not fear replacement; reframe the job

Adding context at the outset, Hemangi Rao, AM Brand Solutions at Pocket Aces’ Clout, urged creators not to panic. “The most crucial message for creators is that they should not be scared of replacement, because the fundamental value proposition in the creator economy is one that AI cannot replicate: authentic human connection and trust.” 

She continued, “Brands’ major marketing plans are built on long-term loyalty, which is achieved through a creator’s genuine, human-driven relationship with their audience, not scalable synthetic media. AI will excel at high-volume, low-cost tasks, but it will only increase the premium paid for unreplicable human IP.”

What still commands a premium

Ansh Mehra, Founder, Design Consultant and AI Educator, agrees on the split: the price for “just making videos” will drop, but “human credibility” holds value. 

He believes that brand collaborations are built on that credibility, a creator’s taste, worldview and consistency. Communities follow people because they believe their judgment, not because they can publish the most clips. 

That is why platform policy matters. YouTube now requires labels for realistic synthetic media and is rolling out likeness detection so creators can find and manage clones. As authenticity and permission become product features, the premium shifts toward creators with a distinct point of view and loyal communities.

Mehra’s advice to creators is pragmatic. “Use AI to speed up production and scale ideas so you stand out while others use it blindly. If you launch with only an AI-generated face, double down on storytelling and emotional depth, the only things that keep audiences engaged when production itself becomes nearly free.”

Mid-tier at risk; top-tier gets pricier

Rao believes the creators most at risk are those whose output is generic, simple or purely informational without a strong personal voice. She said, “For these mid-tier accounts, brands will use synthetic talent for bulk content and personalised micro-ads, which delivers significant cost efficiency. By contrast, pricing power for top-tier human creators with engaged communities and original IP should rise.” 

Net result: brands will pay a premium for what cannot be cloned. Trust and originality become the hedge against an AI content glut.

Licensing your likeness will need studio-grade guardrails

Licensing of digital doubles is already on the table. Rao expects most creators to resist because it threatens the trust that powers their careers. Where licensing does happen, she lists non-negotiables: visible watermarking or provenance, strict category and context bans, a prohibition on using the likeness for future model training and rapid takedown SLAs. 

Ramachandran seconded this view. “No one wants their likeness selling crypto or fairness creams without consent. This will create a new IP economy where creators act like studios protecting their brand equity.” These safeguards mirror where platforms are heading, from YouTube’s disclosure labels and growing likeness-detection tools to emerging provenance standards, and even Sora’s emphasis on user control over likeness inside its app. For marketers, the takeaway is clear: likeness deals will look like talent IP contracts, not simple asset handoffs.

Budgets will be split by job to be done

Synthetic talent solves speed and scale problems. Brands can spin dozens of languages and offer versions in hours, refresh performance creatives to fight fatigue and localise at a far lower cost per asset. Human creators still carry trust for jobs where credibility moves outcomes: launches, reviews, finance and health explainer content, auto test drives, live streams and community-first formats.

On budgets, Ramachandran sees a split strategy: synthetic talent for speed, multilingual versioning and high-volume performance content, and real creators for storytelling and high-trust briefs. Expect FMCG, gaming and e-commerce to move first, while BFSI and auto wait for clearer disclosure and provenance norms. 

Mehra said, “I believe the brands will reallocate budgets, but more than that, they will expect creators to deliver faster, higher-quality content by using AI in their workflows.”

Rao added the brand-side view in detail. “Brands are eager to reallocate a fraction of their existing creator marketing budgets to synthetic talent to achieve key operational goals: speed, scale, and cost control in specific content areas. This is a strategic move, not a wholesale replacement, and probably a very minute fraction of it shall be allocated.” 

This targeted shift will be led by categories with high-volume, quick-turnaround needs, such as FMCG for rapid ad versioning and localisation, and Gaming/Tech for scalable feature demonstrations. Conversely, sectors that rely heavily on human credibility and high-stakes emotional connection, such as BFSI and high-end Auto, along with FMCG, will lag significantly, as a synthetic spokesperson poses a high and unacceptable reputational risk when discussing complex or emotional purchases. 

Rao commented, “To protect the public trust during this shift, a mandatory, clear, and unambiguous on-screen disclosure, a standardised ‘Synthetic Content’ badge, must be universally implemented for all synthetic talent in advertising, backed by verifiable metadata provenance like C2PA standards.”

AI is a workflow shift, not a headcount cut

Building on her early note of caution without fear, Rao reframed the role of the modern creator. “The story should therefore emphasise that AI is not an employee replacement but a workflow transformation. This marks the rise of the ‘AI Creative Director’, a human creator who is no longer primarily a production labourer, but a highly leveraged studio head. Their new role involves mastering creative concept generation and prompt engineering to scale their unique vision infinitely, freeing them to focus on the high-value, human-centric activities that build community.”

Disclosure is still patchy; platforms will have to enforce

Many creators treat AI like any other production tool, so they do not label subtle edits, and audiences are not yet trained to spot them. Platform policies and tools are catching up, with watermarking, “AI-generated” tags and provenance standards being rolled out, but enforcement and creator adoption are uneven. 

Ramachandran commented, “Most creators aren’t openly flagging synthetic edits or AI augmentation unless it’s obvious, and audiences aren’t always trained to spot it. That’s where platforms will step in with watermarking and ‘AI-generated’ tags to preserve credibility.”

Mehra noted that disclosure is inconsistent, and audiences often do not care if quality is high. He said, “Right now, most creators are not interested in disclosing if they’re using AI or any synthetic element. And the audience does notice the difference, but they seem not to care much until it feels natural, and the story resonates with any category of their emotions.” 

For example, if a creator uses an AI avatar and keeps the lip sync smooth and clear, then viewers do not feel any disruption, and the content feels real enough. 

He continued, “But on the brand side, most teams don’t approve of AI-generated content and ask for real human presence and collaboration. As it’s still very early to entirely depend on AI for content creation, brands will need time to adopt and get comfortable with this new wave of technology till clear guidelines and quality standards come into the real-world use cases.”

According to Rao, “Current disclosure practices by creators are inconsistent and primarily driven by platform mandates, like YouTube’s policy to label realistic, potentially misleading synthetic media. However, audiences are becoming much more discerning; undisclosed AI use is increasingly seen as ‘slop’ and directly leads to the erosion of trust, which is a creator’s most valuable asset.” 

Rao emphasised that, meanwhile, Brand Safety teams are highly concerned. She said, “Their worries centre on the reputational risk of a synthetic version of a creator endorsing contradictory or harmful content, the potential for association with misinformation, and the legal ambiguities surrounding the IP rights of AI-generated assets.”

Platforms and policy will decide the floor

Rao closed with a wider warning about responsibility. “Platform Responsibility must be enforced through strict synthetic media policies and rapid content moderation to protect human IP from a flood of unlabelled ‘AI slop.’ The established legal and ethical challenges in the voice cloning market serve as a clear precedent, illustrating the complexity of licensing, right of publicity, and the battle for authenticity that is now arriving in the video space.”

To sum up, the feed will fill up because creation just got easier. The premium will shift to what machines cannot mint: trust, taste and community. The winners will behave like studios that protect IP, license with guardrails, disclose clearly and measure for real lift.