Deepfake company may have used 34,000 images of Bruce Willis’ face, but they don’t own it

There was a big story over the last few days to the effect that Bruce Willis sold his digital likeness to a deepfake company so he could continue to appear in movies or commercials for perpetuity. The report was inaccurate, but like most stories, there was a kernel of truth to it.

For background: Willis supposedly sold his likeness to U.S. deepfake company Deepcake, which creates so-called “digital twins” for use by film productions without the actual actor needing to participate. The Telegraph kicked off a media firestorm when it reported the supposed story.

The publication touted the news as historic, and said Willis was “the first Hollywood star to sell his rights to allow a ‘digital twin’ of himself to be created for use on screen.” While Deepcake did indeed create a digital twin of Willis for a Russian ad, it doesn’t own the likeness, according to Variety.

“There is no partnership or agreement that exists between Bruce and Deepcake,” the company told Variety. “The rights to Bruce Willis’ image [and] to his Digital Twin belong to Bruce Willis and to him only.”

When Deepcake makes a twin, the real person “may substitute them anywhere — on their own decision,” the company said. The company worked with MegaFon, a Russian company, to create an ad featuring Willis.

Deepcake never actually worked with Willis directly, and never made an agreement about the use of his twin, even though they used tens of thousands of images of the real Willis to create the fake one, the company said,

“Our engineers processed a dataset composed of 34,000 images of Bruce Willis and made his ‘digital twin’ for the series of MegaFon ads. Bruce Willis, whose bilateral contractual agreements with MegaFon remain unknown to Deepcake, appreciated our service and described it as ‘a very new and interesting experience’ in the official MegaFon press release.”

Willis commented on the issue in the aforementioned news release, commenting that he “liked the precision with which my character turned out.”

“[The advertisement is] a mini-movie in my usual action-comedy genre. For me, it is a great opportunity to go back in time. With the advent of modern technology, even when I was on another continent, I was able to communicate, work and participate in the filming. It’s a very new and interesting experience, and I thank our entire team.”

Part of the reason the story picked up so much steam is the fact that Willis recently announced his retirement due to an Aphasia diagnosis. Aphasia is a disorder of language that affects personal communication and speech.

We’ll keep you posted if this story takes another unexpected turn.