The Socceroos star stares at the camera as he strides through an enormous atrium, the sound of his football boots on polished concrete echoing around him. Suddenly, he spawns four digital clones that peel off out of view to re-emerge in different settings around the world.

This scene from a social media video is fake and generated by artificial intelligence. But it has been authorised by the very real 22-year-old footballer, Cristian Volpato, the latest professional athlete to licence and monetise his AI likeness.

Draped in a white linen suit with his feet on the sand, Volpato’s “synthetic twin” turns towards a photographer as the limestone stacks of the Twelve Apostles tower behind him. Another dominates a large digital billboard wearing a football jersey. One smiles into a mirror while adjusting a sharp grey suit.

This video was produced by a new company that acts as an AI licensing agent for professional athletes. Experts believe it is one small part of a nascent online industry that could transform the future of image rights and sports content.

As bookmakers, broadcasters and brands increasingly use athletes’ images in AI generated content without their permission, some players are fighting back.

Digital twins

In mid-September, Volpato, who plays for Italian Serie A club, Sassuolo, struck a deal with the California-based company Callandor to license his AI image.

As part of the deal, Callandor was given exclusive rights to Volpato’s digital likeness, voice, biometric profiles and performance data. The company will monetise his AI image by landing brand deals, taking a cut, and help restrict content that does not have his approval.

From Los Angeles, Callandor’s co-founder, Michael Fisk, tells Guardian Australia he’s in the business of making “synthetic twins”.

“Cristian is constantly training,” Fisk says. “He’s constantly out there playing. If he has any free time whatsoever, he’ll probably want to spend it with family and friends, so he loses on a lot of opportunities on brand placements.

“A synthetic twin could be used 24-7, year-round by brands. Assuming it’s approved, right?”

Fisk, a former executive at Sony Pictures and MGM, talks of creating AI-generated book voiceovers with foreign language editions. His team is also plotting apps that offer fans a personal relationship with a synthetic twin.

“Ultimately, the holy grail of an athlete is to have that one-on-one interaction with fans,” Fisk says.

He raises the prospect of creating an app that monitors how people play football. A digital clone of Volpato would give real-time instructions.

“He’s realising I’m not handling the ball well [so] his synthetic twin can tell me, ‘Hey, you should be doing this and this and this’,” says Fisk.

“Volpato would never be able to do that one-on-one with [them].”

Volpato’s deal with Callandor is at the cutting edge of AI rights deals, but he isn’t the first to embrace the technology. In June, Brazilian superstar Neymar licensed his AI likeness to a Chinese-owned entertainment platform that created short videos published during the FIFA World Cup.

These projects are being launched as governments across the world consider basic regulation of AI. At the moment, player contracts with major Australian sporting leagues make no mention of AI.

But technology isn’t waiting for regulation to catch up and Fisk says his synthetic twin clients are blurring the lines between real and fake.

“It’s becoming almost impossible to detect, that look and feel, the difference, particularly when you see it on a mobile device,” he says.

‘We’re watching a race’

William Saunders leads a small Sydney based start-up, Hyperknown, that’s trying to cut similar deals. He says athletes are beginning to realise that if they don’t monetise their AI image, others will.

Earlier this month, the AFL told its gambling partner Sportsbet to stop using AI images of players without their consent. This was prompted by a complaint from the players’ union, which is considering whether stricter rules should be negotiated.

“Sportsbet shows us what happens when companies and technology get ahead of consent,” Saunders says.

“Volpato represents the counter-move: people establishing their rights before others start making decisions about their identities.

“We’re watching a race between what technology can do and what people have actually authorised.”

Many in the Australian sports industry, including content creators, bookmakers, broadcasters and athletes themselves, have started embracing the technology.

Earlier this month, Australian cricketer Travis Head personally appeared in an ad for the broadcaster Kayo. He joked that his AI clone had already finished filming the ad, before throwing to vision of him riding a flying kookaburra.

Brand deals and endorsements have become major money makers for athletes, with some securing multimillion dollar contracts. It remains unclear whether brands will be willing to pay as much for an AI clone, as opposed to the real deal.

But Saunders, whose company has only just launched, says the opportunities are enormous. He talks of AI clones selling products in foreign languages in nations athletes have never visited.

“The next trust signal won’t just say ‘made with AI’,” he says, referencing a tag often used by social media companies. “It will say ‘made with this person’s permission’.

“AI can make content abundant. It can’t manufacture someone’s permission. That’s becoming a new commercial requirement.”

‘A tangle of different interests’

Jonathan Harlen, an expert in intellectual property law at Southern Cross University, says the rise of AI brokers is “the obvious next step” in a “supercharged global market”.

From a legal perspective, he says this new industry presents “a tangle of different interests and rights” that need to be carefully negotiated.

“While copyright already subsists in voice recordings, artistic works and cinematographic images, it is only recognised where there has been human authorship, as well as a degree of independent or creative human effort involved in the making of the work,” Harlen says.

“It doesn’t apply to AI reproductions.”

Celebrities and athletes do have some protection against AI-generated content using their image and voice without consent. But these “passing off” laws only apply when public figures can prove they have suffered an economic loss.

This has not slowed an explosion of deepfakes generated by increasingly sophisticated off-the-shelf software.

In the UK last month, a campaign was launched by some the world’s top footballers, including Cole Palmer and Lucy Bronze, which highlighted their concerns about deepfakes and the inability for regulation to slow their explosion. This campaign was backed by the global player union, Fifpro.

Not all unauthorised deepfakes will be unwanted, however. Fisk says a heavy-handed crackdown on “fan art” using AI tools might be counterproductive.

“You don’t want fans to use your image and put you in [content] using brands that you don’t use, or saying something that you would never say,” he says.

“Obviously, anything with religion and drugs, or whatever it might be, you have to be very, very careful. So it does complicate things a bit, but the opportunities are phenomenal.”

But in this emerging realm, the consequences may be hard to predict.