Using someone's likeness without permission, is it illegal?

Is it illegal to use someone's likeness without permission?

Using someone's likeness without permission is generally illegal when it is commercial, meaning you profit from their identity or use it to promote something, without their consent. The short version: a person's face, name, and voice belong to them, and putting them on a product, an ad, or an AI-generated video without a yes can expose you to a claim.

There are limits. News reporting, commentary, parody, and art get more room under free-speech rules. The line is roughly this: informing or commenting on a person is usually fine, cashing in on their identity is usually not. Everything below assumes the commercial, no-consent case, which is the one that gets people into trouble.

What is misappropriation of likeness?

Misappropriation of likeness is the legal name for taking someone's identity and using it for your own benefit without permission. It is one of the classic privacy claims in US law, and it is the umbrella that a lot of AI-likeness cases fall under. If a brand uses a person's photo in an ad, or an app clones a voice to sell subscriptions, that is misappropriation. The person does not have to be famous, though famous people have more commercial value to protect.

Misappropriation overlaps with the right of publicity. In practice the difference is emphasis: misappropriation grew out of privacy, the harm of being used, while the right of publicity grew out of property, the value being taken. Many states let you claim both. For a fuller breakdown see our guide on the right of publicity.

Image rights: who owns your face?

Your image rights are your control over how your photograph and likeness are used. You own your face in the sense that matters commercially: others need your permission to sell with it. In entertainment and sport, "image rights" is also the contract term for licensing that use, which is how a footballer or an actor turns their likeness into a paid deal instead of an open target.

The problem is not the ownership, it is the enforcement. Owning your image rights does nothing if you cannot find the unauthorized uses or prove they happened.

What if it is an AI deepfake or voice clone?

An AI deepfake or a cloned voice is still a use of someone's likeness. The technology is new, the rule is old. If a synthetic version of a person's face or voice is used commercially without consent, it runs into the same misappropriation and right-of-publicity claims as a stolen photo would. Newer laws make this explicit for AI: several US states now name digital replicas directly, and postmortem rules cover deceased talent whose likeness gets recreated. For the statute detail see our guide on deepfake laws.

What changes with AI is the scale and the evidence problem. One clip becomes hundreds of copies across platforms in days, and a screenshot is weak proof: undated, editable, easy to dispute. Winning the argument depends on documenting each use in a way that cannot be waved away.

What to do about it

If your likeness, or your talent's, is being used without permission, start by finding every use, not just the one you were shown. Search video, image, audio and ad platforms, because misuse rarely sits in one place.

Then preserve the evidence before it vanishes. Capture each instance with a timestamped, tamper-evident record, not a screenshot, because infringers edit or delete once contacted and weak evidence collapses. How talicense preserves evidence →

Send the takedown next: most platforms have a likeness or right-of-publicity report route, and a clean record of what, where and when speeds it up. Then escalate the serious ones, the commercial or repeat infringers, where that documented record is what a lawyer needs to act.

talicense finds unauthorized AI uses of a person's likeness across platforms and documents each one so it holds up, then you and the rights holder decide every step. See how PROTECT works →