Digital doubles has arrived. What does AI mean for creator and brand collaboration?

New Delhi: Mr.Beast recently said content creators are living in “scary times” as AI enters the creator economy.

He’s not wrong. AI has turned video into software, making it cheap, fast, and virtually limitless. OpenAI’s Sora 2 ships with a consumer app and a “cameo” feature that lets you drop a consenting person’s likeness and voice into any scene. YouTube introduced the 2025 stack built on Veo-powered generation, AI-powered first draft editing, podcast-to-video clipping, and extensive similarity detection.

But how will this impact creator income, platforms, and branded content?

The results are clear. Feeds will be flooded, CPMs will be tightened, and deals for creator brands will be subject to reality checks. This is the age of the digital double, where your face and voice appear in every scene and in every language. Great for scale, brutal for identity.

Supply shock is here, but moat moves towards confidence

“Cheap, plentiful, high-quality AI video is about to flood the market. Naturally, as the supply of content explodes, CPMs will be compressed and brand deals will flatten,” said Ramya Ramachandran, founder and CEO of Whoppl.

Her point is already clear. Sora’s public availability and iOS app will reduce production costs and put high-end compositing in more hands, while YouTube’s new tools will reduce editing time and increase the number of versions for short videos. Increased supply typically puts pressure on prices for the middle class.

Ramachandran’s offset is where human superiority survives. “Human creators aren’t going away. We’re going to move from quantity to value. The real moat will be trust, emotion, and community. Creators who own the relationship with their audience will find a lifeline in memberships, live formats, IRL events, commerce, and IP licensing. Essentially, what’s rare becomes premium.”

Don’t be afraid of exchanges. restructure work

Hemangi Rao, Head of AM Brand Solutions at Cloout at Pocket Aces, added some context at the beginning and urged creators not to panic. “The most important message for creators is that they should not fear substitution, because the fundamental value proposition of the creator economy is genuine human connection and trust, something that AI cannot replicate.”

She further stated, “Brands’ core marketing plans are built on long-term loyalty, and this is achieved through truly human-driven relationships between creators and viewers, rather than scalable synthetic media. AI is great at high-volume, low-cost tasks, but it only increases the premium paid for human intellectual property that cannot be replicated.”

Still comes with a premium

Founder, design consultant and AI educator Ansh Mehra also agrees with the split. “Just make a video” costs less, but “human authenticity” has value.

He believes that brand collaborations are built on their authenticity, creator taste, worldview, and consistency. Communities follow people not because they can publish the most clips, but because they trust their judgment.

That’s why platform policy is so important. YouTube now requires labels for realistic synthetic media and is deploying similarity detection to help creators find and manage clones. As authenticity and permission become hallmarks of products, the premium shifts to creators with a clear point of view and a loyal community.

Mehra’s advice to creators is practical. “Using AI to speed up your production and expand your ideas will help you stand out when others are blindly using AI. If you launched with just an AI-generated face, you double the storytelling and emotional depth. This is the only thing that will capture your audience’s attention when the production itself is nearly free.”

Medium-sized companies are at risk. The top end ones are more expensive

Rao believes that the creators most at risk are those who output purely information without general, simple, or strong personal opinions. “For these mid-tier accounts, brands will leverage synthetic talent for high-volume content and personalized micro-ads, delivering significant cost efficiencies. In contrast, top-tier human creators with engaged communities and original IP should have increased pricing power,” she said.

The end result: Brands end up paying a premium for things they can’t replicate. Trust and uniqueness provide a hedge against AI content overload.

Studio-grade guardrails are required to license your likeness

Licensing of digital doubles is already under consideration. Rao expects most creators will resist because it threatens the credibility that supports their careers. She cites as non-negotiables when licensing occurs, a strict ban on visible watermarks and provenance, category and context, and a ban on the use of likeness in future model training and quick deletion SLAs.

Mr. Ramachandran also supported this view. “No one wants their likeness selling crypto cream or fairness cream without their consent. This will create a new IP economy where creators act like studios protecting their brand assets.” These safeguards reflect the direction the platform is headed, from YouTube’s disclosure labels and growing similarity detection tools to new provenance standards and Sora’s focus on user control over similarity within apps. For marketers, the takeaway is clear. Image rights deals will look more like talent IP deals than simple asset deliveries.

The budget is divided by the work to be performed

Comprehensive talent solves problems of speed and scale. Brands can deliver versions in dozens of languages ​​in hours, update performance creative to combat fatigue, and localize at a much lower cost per asset. Human creators still rely on work where authenticity drives results, such as launches, reviews, financial and health instructional content, automated test drives, live streams, and community-first formats.

Regarding the budget, Ramachandran believes there is a need to divide the strategy. We bring together talent for speed, multilingual version control, and high-volume performance content, and real creators for storytelling and authentic briefs. FMCG, gaming and e-commerce are expected to move first, with BFSI and auto awaiting clearer disclosure and provenance standards.

“I think brands will reallocate their budgets, but beyond that, I think they’ll expect creators to leverage AI in their workflows to deliver faster, higher-quality content,” Mehra said.

Mr. Rao added details on the brand’s view. “Brands are keen to reallocate some of their existing creator marketing budgets to synthetic talent to achieve key operational objectives of speed, scale, and cost control in specific content areas. This is a strategic move and will likely result in a small portion of it being allocated rather than a wholesale replacement.”

This targeted shift will be led by categories that require high volume and rapid response, such as FMCG for rapid ad versioning and localization, and games/technology for demonstrating scalable capabilities. Conversely, sectors that rely heavily on human authenticity and high-stakes emotional connections, such as BFSI, luxury automobiles, and FMCG, will be significantly delayed as synthetic spokespeople pose high and unacceptable reputational risks when discussing complex or emotional purchases.

“To protect public trust amidst this change, mandatory, clear, and unambiguous on-screen disclosures, backed by verifiable metadata provenance such as the C2PA standard, or standardized ‘synthetic content’ badges, must be universally implemented across all synthetic talent in the advertising industry,” Rao commented.

AI is not about layoffs, it’s about changing workflows

Building on his fearless and careful early notes, Rao reimagined the role of the modern creator. “The story must therefore emphasize that AI is not a replacement for employees, but a transformation of workflows. This marks the emergence of ‘AI creative directors,’ human creators who are no longer primarily production workers but in charge of highly leveraged studios. Their new role will include mastering creative concept generation and prompt engineering to infinitely expand their unique visions and enable them to focus on high-value, human-centered activities that build community.”

Information disclosure is still slow. platform must be enforced

Many creators treat AI like any other production tool, leaving subtle edits unlabeled and viewers not yet trained to spot them. While platform policies and tools are catching up with watermarks, “AI-generated” tags, and the rollout of provenance standards, enforcement and creator adoption are uneven.

“Most creators won’t openly flag synthetic edits or AI enhancements unless they’re obvious, and viewers aren’t always trained to spot them, so platforms step in with watermarks and ‘AI-generated’ tags to maintain authenticity,” Ramachandran said. ”

Mehra pointed out that disclosures are inconsistent and viewers often don’t care whether the quality is high or not. He said, “At this point, most creators aren’t interested in revealing whether they’re using AI or synthetic elements. And while viewers notice the difference, they don’t seem to care much until it’s natural and the story resonates with any category of emotion.”

For example, when creators use AI avatars and keep lip-syncing smooth and clear, viewers don’t feel confused and the content feels real enough.

He continued: “However, on the brand side, most teams are disallowing AI-generated content and are looking for real human presence and collaboration. It is still too early to rely entirely on AI for content creation, so brands will take time to adopt and get used to this new wave of technology until clear guidelines and quality standards are implemented in real-world use cases.”

According to Rao, “Current disclosure practices by creators are inconsistent and primarily driven by platform mandates, such as YouTube’s policy to label synthetic media as realistic and potentially misleading. However, as audiences become increasingly scrutinized, private AI use is increasingly seen as ‘sloppy’ and directly leads to the erosion of a creator’s most valuable asset: trust.”

Meanwhile, Rao stressed that the brand safety team is very concerned. She says, “Their concerns center on the reputational risk of synthetic versions of creators who support contradictory or harmful content, the potential for association with misinformation, and the legal ambiguity surrounding intellectual property rights for AI-generated assets.”

Platforms and policies determine the floor

Mr. Rao concluded with a broad warning about liability. “Platform responsibility must be enforced through strict synthetic media policies and swift content moderation to protect human IP from a plethora of unlabeled “AI slop.” The legal and ethical challenges established in the audio cloning market serve as a clear precedent, illustrating the complexity of the battle over licensing, publicity rights, and authenticity that is now coming to the video industry. ”

In summary, it’s easier to create, so it fills up your feed. Premium shifts to things that cannot be minted by a machine: trust, taste, and community. Winners will act like studios that protect their intellectual property, license it with guardrails, clearly disclose it and measure real upside.