Kendall Jenner

Kendall Jenner (born 1995) grew up on “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” and became one of the world’s highest-paid supermodels, walking for Chanel, Versace and Victoria’s Secret while building an empire of brand deals. In 2023 she added a novel line to that portfolio: licensing her face to an artificial intelligence.

Becoming “Billie”

At Meta Connect in September 2023, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a roster of celebrity-embodied AI characters for Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. Jenner’s was “Billie” — pitched by Meta as a “ride-or-die older sister” users could message for advice, with her own Instagram account (@yoursisbillie) posting AI-generated videos in Jenner’s likeness. The Information reported Meta paid up to $5 million for roughly six hours of studio work, among the largest of the celebrity persona deals.

The public reception was rocky. Fans found the hyper-realistic clone unsettling — comments like “This is honestly scary” drew hundreds of thousands of likes — and many were confused about whether videos showed the real Jenner, despite “Imagined with AI” labels. Meta quietly discontinued the celebrity personas in mid-2024, less than a year after launch, refocusing on tools that let creators build AI versions of themselves.

Jenner never publicly discussed the deal, but the transaction stands: one of the most photographed faces on Earth judged an AI replica of herself to be a legitimate, lucrative extension of her brand — consent and compensation in exchange for synthetic likeness, at a moment when most of Hollywood was refusing on principle.