Facial data for AI training is in short supply, and ordinary people can now "sell their faces" to earn money, with the maximum payout up to 10,000 yuan?

Once, only celebrities and stars could "make a living by their looks", but this year, ordinary people can also "monetize their faces".

This is a recently trending hot topic that has been heavily covered by leading official media outlets, and Fox Girl is here to share her views on it.

First of all, the fact that ordinary people can "earn money by selling their faces" cannot be achieved without talking about the development of AI.

We won't start from the origin of AI in 1950, that would be too tedious.

Let's fast forward directly to the past two years! With the evolution of technology and the explosive breakthrough of computing power, AI has entered the era of intelligent agents.

This year has even seen a global boom in AI, with favorable policies and increased capital investment, related applications are more widely implemented, and all aspects of ordinary people's lives are beginning to be connected with AI.

A very obvious change is that more and more users are interacting with AI, including Doubao and other similar products;

Almost all new products across all industries and categories have started to roll out AI-related content one after another, including AI advertisements, AI mobile phones and so on;

And the explosive popularity of AI short dramas is arguably the most representative change this year.

For example, an AI short drama that became a hit two months ago recorded over 500 million views on a single platform;

There is also a large internet company that launched a short drama app overseas, whose downloads exceeded 100 million only 9 months after its launch;

A domestic short drama platform once recorded over 168 million daily active users, exceeding the sum of the daily active users of iQiyi, Tencent Video, Youku and Mango TV...

Of course, these are all data-level performances.

In real life, if you go to crowded areas such as restaurants, subway stations and high-speed railway stations, you can easily find that more and more people around you are watching AI short dramas.

If you have also been inadvertently pushed AI video content by the platform, have you realized that:

In fact, AI videos are very easy to distinguish from content shot and produced by real people, because those AI faces are too "template-like"?

Although most users watch AI short dramas mainly for the experience of exciting plots and fast rhythm.

But the industry is developing faster and faster. If AI faces become more and more identical, users will soon get aesthetic fatigue, or even feel disgusted.

As a result, some businesses have seized this great business opportunity and started to launch face licensing platforms.

This brings us back to the key content we are going to talk about today.

This is a new industry phenomenon, which is similar to the logic of setting up offline points to acquire new users when a new application is launched before.

Some face licensing platforms choose to set up portrait collection points in different cities, claiming that this is "to make the characters in AI short dramas more diverse".

Moreover, some platforms tend to target college students, internet celebrities and other groups when setting up collection points.

The face licensing operation online is even simpler!

Users complete real-name authentication on the platform, take photos of their front face and side face by themselves, upload them to the platform for AI generation, and sign an authorization agreement to basically complete the process.

Whether online or offline, in fact, this kind of operation is equivalent to ordinary people selling their portrait rights to the platform.

As for the price, different platforms have different pricing standards.

Some platforms select from the collected portraits. If your face is selected and used in AI content, you will be paid according to the usage per time or per project.

The price ranges from several hundred to several thousand yuan. For ordinary people, the usage fee of their portrait in an AI short video is roughly 100 to 500 yuan.

If you are a professional actor, the fee will be determined according to the actual usage such as the duration of the short drama, ranging from several thousand to 10,000 yuan.

Some platforms set prices based on market demand, including subdivided requirements for gender, age, style and other dimensions.

For example, the highest price on a certain face licensing platform is 6000 yuan for the portrait of an elderly man, while most other "faces" on this platform are only priced at around 500 yuan.

Speaking of which, are you already tempted?

Do you feel that you can also upload your own face, even if the lowest price is only 100 yuan, but if it is used many times, it will be an extra income channel, and the money will add up little by little?

On the surface, that seems to be the case.

Wait a minute, this matter has been intensively reported by the media recently, which is to remind everyone to pay attention to the risks involved!

At present, face information is under the highest level of legal protection.

Personal account passwords, digital information and other data can be modified, but the face is unique and can hardly be changed or reset, except for plastic surgery.

In addition to the basic risks of portrait right exposure and infringement that we can think of, we need to be more worried about the illegal resale, theft, abuse and other problems of face information.

It's too horrible to think deeply. There are still gray areas for personal information leakage. If face information is also leaked... In more serious cases, someone might use your identity to apply for online loans fraudulently? Or you might be targeted by fraud gangs?

Therefore, don't just focus on the small immediate benefits and ignore the uncontrollable risks hidden behind.

Even if this emerging business has great prospects and is beneficial to the long-term development of AI videos, Fox Girl believes that we must treat it with caution, avoid blind following, and do not easily trust the promotional introduction of the platforms.

If you get into trouble later, the impact will be greater, and it will be more troublesome to safeguard your rights!

Besides, AI short dramas and other related industries are still in a period of wild growth, and relevant regulations and supervision are still being improved, which requires time to form industry norms.

Fox Girl thinks that we can wait and see for now, give it more time, and give priority to safety and risk control.

What's your opinion on this matter?

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Tech Fox" (ID: kejihutv), the author is Fox Girl, and it is published by 36Kr with authorization.