The Manekkin manifesto
The real ones get paid.
A position on likeness, consent, and the economics of a face — in an age when anyone can generate one.
AI avatars are everywhere now. They sell skincare, front campaigns, read the news. Most of them were never anyone — and a startling number were someone, scraped and synthesized from a real person who was never asked, never credited, and never paid.
That second category is a problem the industry keeps pretending it doesn't have. A generated face that happens to resemble a real person is not a clever shortcut — in most of the world it is a right-of-publicity exposure waiting to be litigated. The likeness of a human being is theirs. Borrowing it without consent is not innovation. It is the oldest extraction there is, wearing new software.
A face is not a free asset. It belongs to someone.
So we built the opposite of a scraper. On Manekkin, every avatar begins with a real, verified person. They prove who they are once, with an ID check and a liveness selfie. They train an avatar on their own likeness. They write the terms — where it may appear, for how long, whether they keep final cut on every frame. Nothing is generated against a face that hasn't agreed to it.
And when a brand uses that avatar, the person behind it keeps the larger share — eighty-five percent of every deal. Not a token. Not a one-off buyout that signs away their face forever. A standing, fairer split, on terms they can revoke. The platform takes fifteen percent to keep the lights on and the verification honest. That's the whole arrangement.
Every avatar carries this
A verified likeness. Proof that a real person said yes.
Proof matters because trust does. Drop any Manekkin render into /verify and you can read, in plain words, whether a consenting person stands behind it — and the license that governs how it may be used. The credential travels with the image. The record is independent of us. Anyone can check it. We think that should be table stakes for synthetic media, not a premium feature.
AI didn't end modeling. It multiplied it — for the people who consent.
The receipts
We'd rather show you than tell you.
This month, in the open
Live ledger
- 8
- models verified
- €8,560
- paid to models
- 85%
- to models · 15% platform
- 48
- renders signed
Every render is signed with Content Credentials and carries an independent on-chain license record. Counts are platform totals, refreshed hourly.
Your face, your license, your terms. Presence, multiplied — for the real ones.
— Manekkin, est. 2026