Partnerships @hyperknownai | Cast IRL people in your generative media
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Joined August 2010
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William Saunders retweeted
A footballer can only shoot so many ads a year, and a licensed AI copy of him has no such limit.
Cristian Volpato, a 22-year-old Socceroo who plays for Sassuolo, signed in mid-September with California's Callandor, which received exclusive rights to his digital likeness, voice, biometric profiles and performance data, Guardian Australia reports. Callandor will land brand deals, take a cut and help restrict content he hasn't approved.
Co-founder Michael Fisk told the Guardian, "A synthetic twin could be used 24-7, year-round by brands. Assuming it's approved, right?" Callandor was founded in February, and its campaigns are in the pilot phase.
Neymar licensed his AI likeness in June, and earlier this month the AFL told its gambling partner Sportsbet to stop using AI images of players without their consent. Player contracts with major Australian leagues make no mention of AI, per the Guardian, which also says it is unclear whether brands will pay as much for a clone as for the real player.
Exclusivity is the product here, because one approved version makes it easier to object to all the unapproved ones.
ALT A carved wooden shoe mold shaped like a football boot beside a glowing violet glass copy of the same boot.
William Saunders retweeted
The decentralization of Hollywood and the rise of AI film will accelerate this. Every group worldwide once again telling their own stories.
See also this thread from six years ago:
William Saunders retweeted
One of the biggest stories in the world today is how American global cultural influence has evaporated
William Saunders retweeted
Guardian: The AFL has told its official gambling partner, Sportsbet, to stop featuring its high-profile athletes in AI-generated social media content without player permission.
theguardian.com/australia-ne…
William Saunders retweeted
JUST IN: AI voice startup ElevenLabs announces plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into India.
William Saunders retweeted
🚨 TOKEN2049: Balaji, founder of the Network State says the next step is “to scale and decentralize by open sourcing everything we learned.”
William Saunders retweeted
“Being sovereign means you control the destiny of that technology. You’re able to understand what’s in it. You’re able to modify it yourself. You’re able to evolve with it yourself. You’re able to test it yourself.”
William Saunders retweeted
Today we launched HyperKnown.ai from Astana, Kazakhstan, at the #DigitalBridge2026 AI & Digital Bridge conference.
HyperKnown is a marketplace where real, identity-verified people license their face and voice for AI-generated content.
Companies cast them for ads, billboards and films.
Each person sees the full brief and decides, project by project, whether their likeness is used.
Every licence comes with signed consent and a provenance record.
After 20 years in film and content, the last few in AI, I keep hitting the same problem, no one can prove the person on screen agreed to be there, or where their likeness came from.
HyperKnown fixes that, at scale.
If you want to earn from your likeness, apply to the roster at hyperknown dot ai / join. If you run campaigns, were running boutique pilots with a small group of companies.
Send through a brief, or start at hyperknown dot ai | Real people. Real consent.
William Saunders retweeted
8,067 films from 125 countries. $1M+ prize pool. The Astana AI Film Festival declares winners *today*, making it the world's largest AI cinema competition — 12x bigger than most film festivals, 3x bigger than Austin's. The future of cinema is being decided right now.
William Saunders retweeted
As part of his participation in the #AIDigitalBridge2026 International Forum in Astana, President @TokayevKZ addressed leading global technology and business leaders, highlighting Kazakhstan’s ambition to build a competitive digital economy and strengthen its position as a regional technology hub.
@nvidia @RevLebaredian @generalatlantic @higgsfield_ai @astanahub @JensenHuang
William Saunders retweeted
It's time to decentralize Hollywood with AI.
Introducing the new Network School Astana AI Film Festival, in partnership with the Republic of Kazakhstan. We're awarding $2M in prizes with entries accepted from around the world. So: submit your film now at aaiff.ai.
William Saunders retweeted
China released 128,000 microdramas in the first three months of 2026, and more than 95% used AI somewhere in production. A new marketplace is growing around that: people licensing their faces to AI ads, games and short dramas.
You upload photos or visit a studio, choose where your face can appear and set a price. Producers search the catalog and pay to use it.
ActID registered around 800 people. About 300 agreed to license their faces, and its first two productions licensed around ten faces at 99 to 500 yuan per episode.
The platform takes 10% and says it helps users find unauthorized copies. Guangzhou’s Internet Court has handled around 700 AI face-theft cases in three years.
William Saunders retweeted
I've worked in a bank (10yrs), a hedge fund (6yrs) and in HFTs (4yrs). Two things:
1. Yes, I'm old
2. You be amazed - stunned - by the number of premium name counterparties whose polished branding and external image belies a myriad of internal 'systems' that are held together by excel + a bunch of batch processes written in a language that only a single contractor knows how to maintain