**Understanding the Legal Responsibility and Duty of Care in Celebrity-Endorsed Digital Avatar Live-Streaming Sales**
This Chinese article discusses the trend of using digital avatars of celebrities for live-streaming sales (a process referred to as ‘endorsing digital humans for live-streaming’) in advertising. High-profile figures such as artists, athletes, experts, scholars, and internet celebrities license their image, name, and voice to advertisers or live-streaming platforms to create virtual avatars that can sell products during live broadcasts.
These live-streaming sales activities could be regarded as a form of advertising. When a famous figure authorizes a digital avatar for live-streaming, it is often interpreted as allowing businesses to use their name or image to endorse or prove the quality of products or services, effectively making them a spokesperson for these products or services. It can be challenging for these figures to review the advertising content beforehand due to the unique nature of live-streamed digital avatar scenarios.
Article 56, Paragraph 3 of China’s Advertising Law mandates that spokespeople must exercise a duty of care, and celebrities involved in live-streaming sales with digital avatars might be held responsible for any issues. For understanding the duty of a celebrity in authorizing digital humans for live-streaming, it’s crucial to comprehend their duty of care, which primarily comes from the trust consumers place in them. Because digital live-streaming has a “blurring reality and fiction” characteristic, consumers usually find it hard to discern the authenticity and might believe that the digital human is a real person, hence placing their trust in the celebrity endorser. If the endorser (licensor) breaches this duty of care and causes harm to the consumer, they should bear responsibility for the damage to the consumer’s interests.
http://hk.crntt.com/doc/1067/2/8/2/106728257.html
