Defending your own face is now a celebrity line item

Stylist, trainer, publicist, and now a subscription to people who delete videos you never filmed. Fame has always been expensive to maintain, but the newest line item is the strangest: paying to stop the internet from putting words in your mouth.

What the invoice looks like

According to Spanish outlet Que.es, citing Mujerhoy, celebrities now pay from 3,000 euros a month to companies that track and remove AI fakes. That is reportedly the entry price in Los Angeles. The firm everyone is talking about is Loti AI, which the same report says was founded two years ago by Luke Arrigoni and now protects about 20,000 people, from celebrities to executives to military personnel. It says it scans roughly 600 million pieces of content a day, using photos and audio clips of the client. The goal is to catch a fake within three days. Past that, in the founder's words, "the damage can't be avoided."

In Spain, the report adds, the model is different: roughly 400 euros per removed item, with no permanent monitoring. Treat all of this as one outlet's account of a young industry, not an audited price list.

This is not a vanity expense, and that's the point

A stylist makes you look better. A deepfake cleaner keeps you from looking like someone else. That's a different kind of spending, closer to insurance or security than to glamour.

We think it's rational, and the facts point that way. The Guardian reports that Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian, Gwyneth Paltrow and Tom Hanks have all been deepfaked to promote products. Researcher Alice Marwick explains why: they have hundreds of hours of footage online to feed a model. For a person whose income is their face, a fake endorsement is not an annoyance. It's a leak in the business.

We also think the "fixed expense" framing is right, and slightly grim. Fixed means it never ends. Even when one fake is removed, the Guardian notes, another often pops up in its place. You don't solve this problem. You rent a solution to it, indefinitely.

The real story is who can't afford it

Here is where the thesis needs a nuance. The need clearly reaches beyond the red carpet. We doubt, though, that a 3,000-euro subscription will ever become a mass-market product.

The Guardian piece is the evidence: lifestyle creator Emily Schuman, with more than 500,000 Instagram followers, found herself in a sponsored ad for a company she had never heard of, built from a selfie she had posted years earlier. She called it "so violating." She is a creator, not a studio-backed movie star, and in our view creators of her size are exactly where the gap opens between those who can pay for this kind of protection and those who can't.

The same logic runs through the legal route. Matthew McConaughey and Taylor Swift's company have both filed trademark applications covering things like a catchphrase, a likeness, and imagery, according to TM Express. That's a smart move for people with lawyers on speed dial. It is also a reminder that, for now, protecting your image means buying it back piece by piece.

Meanwhile, in our view, the platforms barely pay a cost. The Que.es piece says X is the network most resistant to deleting fake content. And back in February 2024, a lawyer quoted by CBC, Molly Reynolds, described platforms facing a "question of moral obligations versus legal obligations." That framing hasn't aged badly. Until the legal side changes, a private invoice fills the hole.

Our verdict

Treat the 3,000-euro subscription as a symptom, not a product to admire. When the right to your own likeness depends on your budget, the system has quietly turned a basic protection into a luxury service.

For the famous, paying is sensible. For everyone else, the practical advice is unglamorous: know how quickly fakes spread, report fast, and don't treat a viral clip as proof of anything. For lawmakers and platforms, the message is blunter. If removal takes days and costs thousands, it's not a protection. It's a toll.