Queen Latifah

Queen Latifah (Dana Owens, born 1970) rose from Golden Age hip-hop — her 1993 hit “U.N.I.T.Y.” won a Grammy — into a wide-ranging career as an Oscar-nominated actress (Chicago), talk-show host, and producer. As both a recording artist and a screen performer, she sits squarely inside the industries wrestling hardest with AI likeness rights.

Owning her own avatar

In late 2023, Latifah partnered with Lenovo on its “Evolve Small” campaign, allowing the company to build a fully lifelike AI avatar of her that small businesses could summon into custom 15-second ads naming their shop. Rather than have her likeness taken, she chose to license it deliberately — framing the move as maintaining control over her own image. She told Fortune she feels the same nervousness as everyone else about AI, but considers its spread “inevitable” and “a bell we can’t un-ring.”

At the Red Sea International Film Festival in December 2025, she urged the industry “not to be afraid” of the technology, saying “it’s not going anywhere” and should be used to tell more interesting stories. She paired that optimism with a caveat — that “there will always be people who don’t use this technology in the right way,” and that protections are needed. It is a measured, consent-first embrace: not the anxious opposition of many peers, but not blind cheerleading either.