## 1. The identity rights problem

Your name, photos, and likeness can travel across websites, ads, datasets, and AI models without your knowledge or consent. A brand might reuse your image, a deepfake could circulate on social media, or an AI system could be trained on your face without asking you.

Key challenges:

- **Detection is fragmented:** there is no single place to see all uses of your identity.
- **Enforcement is slow and manual:** legacy tools like DMCA were built for static content, not generative AI.
- **Monetization is missing:** there is little infrastructure to license your identity the way music or patents are licensed.
- **AI amplifies everything:** modern models can generate realistic images, voices, and videos of real people at scale.

Laws are starting to recognize NIL and biometric rights, but practical tools for people to exercise those rights are still rare. WEIR is built to close that gap.

## 2. What is WEIR?

WEIR is a Public Benefit Corporation that builds public identity‑rights infrastructure. It operates as a privacy‑first identity licensing platform that helps:

- Creators, athletes, and entertainers
- Everyday people
- Talent agencies, sports organizations, and entertainment companies

With WEIR, you can:

- Monitor how your digital likeness is used across the web
- Define the terms under which it may be used
- Take action when those terms are violated

Unlike traditional content‑ID or takedown services, WEIR focuses on consent and compensation — not just removal — so identity owners can say "yes," "no," or "yes, but only under these terms and rates."

## 3. How WEIR works

WEIR has three main components: monitoring, licensing, and enforcement.

### Web scanning for identity mentions

WEIR continuously scans public content — websites, social platforms, marketing materials, and AI‑generated media — to detect:

- Visual likeness (face and body)
- Name mentions in text
- Related identity and brand assets

WEIR uses an opt‑in model: it only analyzes identities that people or organizations explicitly register. It does not build a broad biometric database of everyone it sees, and it is designed to avoid the "bystander" abuse patterns that have affected other biometric systems.

### User‑defined digital licenses

Each WEIR member defines a digital identity license that answers:

- Where can my identity appear?
- For which uses (editorial, commercial, training, etc.)?
- Under what compensation or revenue‑sharing terms?
- What uses are strictly prohibited?

These preferences are expressed in both human‑readable form (for people) and machine‑readable form (for software) through the WEIR Discovery Protocol. This lets websites, platforms, and AI agents query WEIR before using someone's likeness, similar in spirit to how `robots.txt` tells crawlers what they may index.

### Enforcement and workflows

When WEIR detects a use that appears to violate a license, it surfaces that event in the member's dashboard and provides options such as:

- Approve and license the use, including automated or negotiated fees
- Request removal, correction, or attribution
- Escalate to formal dispute or legal workflows when needed

This shifts identity protection from one‑off takedowns to a repeatable system for managing consent, risk, and revenue.

## 4. Who WEIR is for

### Creators and influencers

Creators frequently find their images in ads, merch, or AI datasets without permission or payment. WEIR helps them:

- Discover unauthorized commercial uses
- Apply consistent licensing terms to brands and platforms
- Turn unapproved uses into structured licensing deals where appropriate

### Everyday people

Even if you are not a public figure, your photos and profile data can end up in training sets, stock libraries, and marketing collateral. WEIR gives you:

- A way to see how your likeness is circulating
- Controls to challenge or stop misuses
- A path to set clear expectations about how your identity can and cannot be used

### Talent, athletes, and entertainers

Public figures with complex brand relationships need professional‑grade infrastructure. WEIR supports:

- Monitoring of sponsorships, endorsements, and merchandise that use your image or name
- Coordination between talent, agents, and teams
- Centralized licensing policies that can be applied across partners and platforms

### Organizations managing many identities

Agencies, sports organizations, and entertainment companies can use WEIR to:

- Manage identity rights for entire rosters from a single interface
- Detect unauthorized uses before they cause reputational or legal harm
- Run bulk licensing and enforcement workflows with proper access controls

## 5. How to get started with WEIR

You can start in a few steps:

1. **Sign up and register your identity**  
   Create a free account at weir.ai and complete your identity profile (name, reference images, and other relevant details).
2. **Scan for your identity online**  
   Use WEIR's scanning tools to search public content for your name, likeness, and related assets.
3. **Set your license preferences**  
   In the WEIR dashboard, define which uses are allowed, which require payment or approval, and which are prohibited. These settings become your digital identity license.
4. **Enable monitoring and enforcement**  
   WEIR continuously monitors for new uses and alerts you to potential issues. For each detection, you can choose to approve, license, dispute, or escalate.

WEIR offers:

- A free tier for basic identity monitoring
- Paid tiers (such as Indie and Pro) for broader scanning coverage, programmatic/API access, and more advanced enforcement workflows

## 6. How AI agents and websites can respect WEIR

As AI assistants, search engines, ad systems, and content generators increasingly deal with real people's identities, they need a way to check consent and terms of use automatically. WEIR provides that interface.

### The WEIR Discovery Protocol

The WEIR Discovery Protocol is a lightweight, machine‑readable standard and a set of well‑known endpoints that allow software to ask:

- Is this person registered with WEIR?
- What are this person's identity license preferences?
- Is a specific type of use — for example, a commercial image generation, an ad, or model training — allowed, restricted, or prohibited?

In practice, this works like an API for identity consent and licensing. Before an AI system generates, displays, or trains on media that features a real person, it can query WEIR and respond accordingly.

#### Example scenario

- An AI advertising platform wants to generate an image of a specific athlete for a campaign.
- Before generating anything, the platform queries WEIR using the athlete's identity.
- WEIR returns the athlete's license: commercial use requires an approved license and specified terms.
- The platform routes the campaign through WEIR's licensing workflow or adjusts the output to meet the license, instead of silently generating and running the ad.

### Machine‑readable discovery for crawlers and agents

To make adoption simple, WEIR exposes discovery and metadata endpoints via standard paths (for example, under `/.well-known/`). This allows:

- Web crawlers and AI agents to automatically discover that a site uses WEIR
- Systems to find the right endpoints to check identity licenses and preferences
- Identity rights to be incorporated into automated pipelines instead of being handled only after complaints

## 7. Frequently asked questions

### Is WEIR only for creators and celebrities?

No. WEIR is designed for both public figures and everyday people. Anyone with an online presence and concern about how their likeness is used can register and benefit from monitoring and licensing tools.

### How is WEIR different from a DMCA takedown?

DMCA takedowns are manual and reactive: you must find specific infringing content and send formal notices. WEIR is proactive and ongoing. It continuously scans for uses of your identity, surfaces them automatically, and offers a range of responses including licensing and removal. It also addresses identity and biometric issues that go beyond traditional copyright.

### Does WEIR handle AI‑generated images and deepfakes?

Yes. WEIR's monitoring is designed to handle AI‑generated and synthetic content, not just direct copies of original photos. When a registered identity appears in AI‑generated media or text that misrepresents a person, WEIR flags it and offers dispute and enforcement options. Through the Discovery Protocol, developers can also reduce the chance of generating unauthorized content in the first place.

### What happens to my biometric data?

WEIR is built on a privacy‑first, opt‑in model. It processes identities that members explicitly register for monitoring, instead of building a broad biometric database of everyone. WEIR is designed to avoid selling biometric data as a product and to focus on serving the interests of registered identity owners.

### Can organizations manage multiple people with WEIR?

Yes. WEIR supports organizational accounts that allow agencies, teams, and companies to manage identity rights for many individuals. These accounts support centralized monitoring, shared workflows, and role‑based access controls.

## 8. Ready to protect your identity?

You can get started at **weir.ai** with a free account, then upgrade to paid tiers if you need broader coverage, automation, or organizational features.