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   'We're entering...a post-truth era, where it's almost impossible to tell if   
   something's real or not"; Cameo CEO on the unchartered territory of AI   
      
   Date:   
   Mon, 19 Jan 2026 16:39:08 +0000   
      
   Description:   
   In this exclusive conversation with Cameo CEO and co-founder Steven Galanis,   
   we look at the impact of AI on his business and our perception of   
   authenticity.   
      
   FULL STORY   
      
   There's a place where you can have Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) wish you happy   
   birthday, Elmo lift your spirits, or Chuck Norris round-house kick your   
   question into an answer. That's the magic of Cameo, the destination for   
   personalized celebrity video messages. But it, like so many others, faces   
   growing and not insignificant challenges in the age of AI.    
      
   "We're entering...a post-truth era, where it's almost impossible to tell if   
   something's real or not," Cameo CEO and Co-founder Steve Galanis told me   
   during a recent, wide-ranging conversation.   
      
   Cameo has been around for almost a decade and, in that time, become almost   
   shorthand for celebrity shoutouts. The videos that the stars make on the   
   platform and are delivered by Cameo to paying customers (Cameo takes a 25%   
   cut) have become a sort of cultural touchstone, and the messages are    
   sometimes viral and newsworthy in their own right (with the occasional   
   home-grown controversy thrown in).    
      
   The platform's heyday was arguably in 2020, during the pandemic, but Cameo   
   persists, and there are still countless A-, B-, C-, D-List and beyond   
   celebrities making anywhere from six figures to  likely  lunch money on the   
   platform. The world it faces now, though, is significantly different than the   
   one in which it launched in 2017. It's different to the world that existed    
   six years, or even one year ago.   
      
   Trust and verify    
      
   Cameo's onboarding process asks you to submit images of your photo ID (they   
   also gather bank information) to, as Galani told me, verify they're real   
   people, but that may no longer be enough. "We weren't worrying about this a   
   year ago or two years ago; we didn't see this happening. Now, when there's   
   someone I know is real, I need to know, is the video that they're making   
   real?"    
      
   This is the "post-truth era" Galanis was referring to. It's a point he   
   hammered home repeatedly and something that Cameo is grappling with right    
   now.    
      
   While the platform verifies every celebrity on the platform, it does not   
   automatically catch AI-generated content and, in fact, relies on customers to   
   report it.   
      
   Galanis told me about a "long-time talent" on Cameo where customers noticed   
   they were "clearly doing fake videos". Cameo investigated and "even though   
   it's the real person that's on Cameo, they were uploading AI versions of    
   their video, sending it to customers, and that is not something that we allow   
   on our platform," he told me.    
      
   It's not that Cameo does nothing to authenticate its content, though the   
   authentication largely revolves around verifying that the celebrity you're   
   engaging with is actually that person. To guard against AI deep fakes of its   
   stable of celebrities, Cameo uses C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and   
   Authenticity) digital watermarks.    
      
   Galanis, though, knows that's not the end of it and sees authenticity as "a   
   continuum and it really is a big problem, and we're thinking a lot about it   
   here".    
      
   What he'd like, though, is for the world at large to think more broadly about   
   content verification and truth, "As a society, it's vital that we go and    
   solve these issues of real versus fake, authentic, or not," he told me.   
      
   Fighting a giant   
      
   One party that might not be helping Galanis's cause, though, is OpenAI. The    
   AI giant is famous not just for its powerful ChatGPT generative chatbot, but   
   for the Sora app , which is letting anyone create short, vertical AI videos   
   featuring themselves and "cameos".    
      
   Yes, that's right, OpenAI stepped right on the Cameo brand to introduce a   
   platform that can take AI avatars of almost anyone (who gives permission) and   
   create videos of them doing almost anything.    
      
   Cameo and Galanis, naturally, sued .    
      
   The reasons for fighting OpenAI were obvious to Galanis. Cameo's been   
   responsible for creating what he calls "10 million magical moments," but   
   there's also the concern about what happens to his brand. What "if,    
   suddenly," he explained, "you had a product called Cameo that was all fake AI   
   slop videos as opposed to the real ones. You look at what that would do to    
   our Google rankings, or when the social media suddenly gets flooded with   
   Cameos that aren't real. That would be existential for us as a brand."    
      
   Cameo's won some early legal battles , and there's no mention in the Sora app   
   of "cameos", but Galanis is still concerned: "We are in a David versus    
   Goliath battle for our very existence."    
      
   Despite everything, Galanis sounds net-positive about AI. He says he uses it   
   often in his daily life, and he worries about "luddites" who try to avoid it.    
      
   Galanis recounted a recent visit to his alma mater, Duke University, where he   
   was a history major, and how the professors quizzed him about letting    
   students use AI. For him, it seems less a question about what happens in   
   university than what comes after for these students.    
      
   "The reality is, if they come work for me or they come work for any company,   
   companies are demanding their people are using these tools."    
      
   Even on Cameo today, there is a new class of AI celebrities that are gaining   
   traction, including Marcus the Worm, a wholly AI-generated creation that can   
   charge $150 per personalized message.   
      
   The new Cameo frontier    
      
   AI's transformative nature also stands to open up new opportunities for Cameo   
   and its partners. Years ago, Illumination Animation (makers of the popular   
   Despicable Me franchise) wanted to put Minions on Cameo but realized there    
   was just one voice actor to do it, and it would've been impossible to scale   
   the personalized requests.    
      
   "Now, what you can do with companies like Eleven Labs , and others that have   
   done amazing work on generative AI and then voice models, you can now go and   
   take that voice actor, and he can continue, [and] he or she can monetize by   
   having their voice out in the marketplace."    
      
   In other words, the original voice actor could put his voice in, say Eleven   
   Labs, let it create a model that can then have him recite personalized   
   responses (maybe with a generative AI Minion video from Illumination), and,   
   with his permission, he gets paid for each generative, yet personalized,   
   response.    
      
   That's the potential upside, but Galanis is less sanguine about how AI   
   companies build and train their models and generate IP-related content. His   
   business doesn't own the videos of its celebrities' posts and won't train AI   
   models based on them.    
      
   "Our entire business relies on people being able and willing to pay a premium   
   for the IP of the talent that we work with. So in a world where all the   
   content that they've ever made gets stolen, and people could kind of use this   
   stuff for free, that would be existentially bad for our talent and, by   
   extension, it would be existentially bad for us."    
      
   Cameo and Galanis's role, he told me, is to maintain the Name, Image,    
   Likeness (NIL) of his clients (celebrities) even as platforms like Sora   
   indicate that NIL, perhaps, doesn't matter anymore.    
      
   Galanis believes Cameo can act as stewards of the talent's IP, but he's also    
   a realist about the challenges they (and the rest of us) face.    
      
   "This stuff is getting exponentially better every day, right? So, while you   
   might easily be able to pass that, like, 'real or fake?' test today, I've    
   seen things that are coming, and I'm telling you, like, you don't know."    
      
   ======================================================================   
   Link to news story:   
   https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/were-entering-a-post-truth-e   
   ra-where-its-almost-impossible-to-tell-if-somethings-real-or-not-cameo-ceo-on-   
   the-unchartered-territory-of-ai   
      
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