Spectral Likeness Ltd

The Problem#

• When a person dies, their face, voice, and likeness become vulnerable to unauthorised use — deepfake advertisements, AI chatbots trained on their social media, synthetic voice clones selling products they never endorsed
• California’s post-mortem right of publicity (Civil Code § 3344.1) provides legal protection, but enforcement requires proving the deceased’s explicit wishes
• Those wishes — if they exist at all — are buried in free-text clauses in wills, unstructured and unenforceable by platforms
• Families currently discover unauthorised use weeks or months after it appears, by which time the content has been shared thousands of times

How They’d Use INHERIT#

• Digital likeness wishes are modelled in wish.json with wishType: "digital_likeness"
• likenessConsent captures the deceased’s explicit position: "permitted", "prohibited", "restricted", or "not_stated"
• likenessScope specifies what’s covered: "voice", "visual_appearance", "writing_style", "personality_model", "full_avatar"
• likenessPermittedUses and likenessProhibitedUses enumerate specific contexts: "memorial", "family_private", "educational", "commercial", "legal_proceedings", "artistic"
• syntheticMediaPolicy records the overarching stance: "allow_with_attribution", "prohibit_all", "family_decision", or "not_stated"
• likenessControllerPersonId names the person authorised to make decisions about the likeness after death
• likenessEnforcement[] tracks takedown requests to platforms, with requestType, status, and referenceNumber
• existingDigitalModels[] records known AI models of the deceased, with modelType ("chatbot", "voice_clone", "visual_avatar") and action ("preserve", "delete", "transfer", "restrict")
• The us-estate extension handles federal estate tax implications of any commercial likeness value

The Integration#

• Export-focused: Spectral Likeness generates INHERIT documents from client consultations during lifetime planning, capturing explicit digital likeness preferences
• On death notification, the likeness controller receives the INHERIT document and uses it to submit structured enforcement requests to platforms
• The structured format means platforms receive machine-readable proof of the deceased’s wishes, not a scanned PDF of a will clause

The Business Case#

• Structured enforcement requests reduce platform response time from 30 days to 72 hours — the platform receives machine-readable consent data, not a legal letter requiring human review
• Spectral Likeness charges $2,500 per lifetime plan and $5,000 per post-mortem enforcement engagement
• Proactive planning eliminates the “we didn’t know” defence platforms use to delay takedowns
• The California market alone has an estimated 50,000 high-net-worth individuals whose digital likeness has significant commercial value

Before / After#

Without INHERIT:

1. A public figure dies; their family discovers a cryptocurrency advertisement using the deceased’s face three weeks later
2. The family’s attorney sends a cease-and-desist citing California Civil Code § 3344.1
3. The platform requests proof the deceased explicitly prohibited commercial use of their likeness
4. The attorney searches the will — there’s a vague clause about “digital privacy” but nothing specific about synthetic media
5. The platform’s legal team takes 60 days to review; the advertisement runs for two months

With INHERIT:

1. The public figure records explicit preferences during estate planning: likenessConsent: "restricted", likenessProhibitedUses: ["commercial"], syntheticMediaPolicy: "prohibit_all"
2. On death, Spectral Likeness submits a structured enforcement request with the INHERIT document attached
3. The platform’s automated system reads the machine-readable consent data and removes the advertisement within 72 hours
4. The likenessEnforcement[] array records the takedown for the executor’s records