Bridging the AI Trust Gap: How Brands and Talent Can Navigate the New Frontier

Somewhere online right now, a fake version of a famous face is saying something its owner never said. Generative AI is getting more convincing by the day, and talent is paying the price. Brands are caught in the middle. They're under pressure to use AI to move at the speed of culture, but every misstep erodes the trust their campaigns depend on.

This week at Advertising Week New York, Ogilvy brought together leaders from the agency, entertainment, brand, and talent industries to tackle that challenge head-on. Ogilvy Group Global CEO Laurent Ezekiel led a panel with actor and entrepreneur Terry Crews, Carol Reed (Global Chief Innovation Officer, Ogilvy), Alexandra Shannon (Head of Strategic Development, CAA), and digital CX executive Chris Paul to explore how the industry can move past fear and speculation toward responsible, consent-driven standards for the AI era.

Closing the Trust Gap: Ethics, Consent, and Guardrails in Generative AI

Ezekiel draws on David Ogilvy's classic premise of a contract of trust between a brand and its consumers. AI and bad actors, he warned, threaten to widen a dangerous trust gap. Enthusiasm for AI tools is high, but industry conversations keep skipping the human element. Reed found that of 500 sessions at Advertising Week NY, 32 focused on AI. Only five addressed consumer trust, and just one touched on human likeness protection. "If you think about advertising at large," Reed said, "we've got to guess like 70, 80% of ads have people in them. So this is a really important topic."

The fix is a shift from unauthorized proliferation to consent-first frameworks. Shannon put it plainly: "We fundamentally believe that every individual-not just talent, every single one of us-should have the right to control if, how, and under what terms our most precious assets-our voice, our likeness, our bodies of works, our IP-are used by others, including but not limited to AI." CAA's "The Vault" shows what that looks like in practice: high-fidelity digital capture, rooted in full talent ownership, that creates a safe foundation for creative exploration. As Shannon summed it up: "The antithesis to unauthorized AI isn't no AI, it's consent-based and controlled AI that folks are opting into."

The Takeaway: Unauthorized and predatory AI isn't going away. The answer is transparent, consent-based guardrails that put human agency first.

Impact for Brands: Brands can't treat AI ethics as an afterthought. Clear governance, consent protocols, and human-in-the-loop approvals protect both brand reputation and talent relationships. They also ensure synthetic content builds consumer trust instead of eroding it.

Creator Empowerment: Protecting Legacy and Authenticity

For public figures, unauthorized AI is an urgent threat. Crews described how easily fake AI videos and voice clones circulate online. Some fan-made content is meant as homage, but without control, talent is exposed: "All I could think about was: What if someone wanted to degrade me? What if someone wanted me to do something that was insulting?" Crews said. "We have to make sure we get control of this. It's like nuclear power; [it can] power an aircraft carrier, or you could have Chernobyl."

Consent changes the equation. When talent opts in and directs their digital likeness, synthetic work becomes genuine creative collaboration. Crews recalled a conversation with Michael B. Jordan about his official avatar in Call of Duty: "He said, 'I'm playing you.' He didn't say, 'I'm playing an image of you.' He said, 'I'm playing you,' because he knew that I gave them me. Once the public knows it's actually me, now we know it's safe."

For Crews, capturing his authorized likeness at CAA was about securing his future: "I gave all my iterations of who I was, because I knew this is my legacy. My dream, literally, is to be able to have my great grandkids approve me in a film and benefit from that."

The Takeaway: Talent will embrace AI only when they own their likeness, get fairly paid, and approve the final result. Do that, and AI becomes a powerful extension of their personal brand.

Impact for Brands: Celebrity endorsements have always run on authenticity. Uncontrolled AI dilutes or misuses a talent's personal brand, and the partnership loses its power. Brands must work with creators in ways that respect their IP and protect their authentic voice.

Agile Creativity: How Governance Unlocks Speed at the Scale of Culture

Brands face serious commercial pressure to bring AI into their marketing workflows. For most enterprises, the question is no longer whether, but when and how. As Paul put it: "Most brands, most clients have actually already had the ingestion application of AI programmed into their profitability expectations and targets. So it's not if, it's when and how."

But rushing in without safeguards is a big risk. "If the value of that talent is eroded, then the whole brand contract with that talent is pointless... for a brand, that can be a multi-million dollar bet that they're making where the value could just be dust instantaneously if it's used the wrong way."

Guardrails don't slow production. They speed it up. Upfront permissions, clear usage terms, machine-readable governance, and transparent labeling (such as watermarking and compliance with emerging laws like California's synthetic performer law) let brands operate safely at the speed of culture.

"Protection actually unlocks the ability to be more agile by creating upfront this trust foundation where the permissions are clear," Shannon explained. With authorized assets and approval workflows in place, brands can respond to real-time moments without the constraints of traditional production schedules.

The Takeaway: Governance isn't a barrier to innovation. It's what makes fast, real-time creative possible.

Impact for Brands: Clear principles give marketers the confidence to experiment. Combine responsible compliance, machine-readable permissions, and human verification, and brands can create around cultural moments safely and authentically.

Conclusion

Trust is the new creative brief. The future belongs to the agencies, brands, and talent that embrace responsible AI to protect creative identity and integrity, and in doing so unlock a more ambitious future for business and culture alike. That starts with an active, transparent contract between brands, agencies, talent, and consumers, with creators and public figures holding final control over how their digital doubles are used. As Reed put it, "When creating AI content with talent, transparency is essential. We have to ensure talent reviews everything we produce and maintains final sign-off. Approval is paramount."

To learn more about how Ogilvy is innovating at the intersection of Trust and Talent to establish responsible, consent-driven AI standards, contact us at [email protected] .