Digital twin theory: when does a digital twin become a commercial asset?

Maya Habli

Rany J Sader
Sader Law, Beirut
rany.sader@saderlaw.com

For centuries, identity has been recognised through physical presence and official records. A passport tells governments who we are, a signature expresses our consent, a photograph captures a moment in our lives and, together, these elements have helped identify one person from another.

Today, another form of identity is rapidly emerging.

The digital twin

Unlike a passport, a digital twin is not issued by a government; it is built, progressively, through our daily digital life. Every photograph we publish, every email we send, every online meeting we attend, every voice recording we make and every prompt we submit to an artificial intelligence (AI) platform. On their own, they seem like normal daily actions, but together they begin to tell our story.

AI is changing the way these digital traces are used. Instead of looking at them separately, AI connects them, learns from them and begins to recognise how we write, how we speak, what we know and, even, how we make decisions.

What starts as scattered pieces of information slowly becomes a digital representation of an identifiable individual. This is what we now call a digital twin.

This digital twin is not a chatbot, nor an avatar or simply another online profile. It is an AI-trained digital representation of a person, built from lawfully collected digital materials and capable of reproducing identifiable human attributes. Most people do not think of their digital twin as an asset. However, many businesses do, particularly those in advertising, entertainment and the media sectors.

Not every digital twin has commercial value. Many digital twins remain personal or experimental. Others, however, are already being used to promote brands, create advertising campaigns, produce educational content, communicate with customers and generate revenue. The moment a digital twin begins generating commercial value, the legal discussion also changes.

The legal issues

Existing legal frameworks already protect many of the elements that constitute a digital twin. Copyright law protects creative works, data protection laws regulate personal and biometric information and AI governance frameworks promote the responsible development and use of AI. These legal protections remain essential, yet each protects a different part of the digital twin. Looking at the digital twin as a whole, however, one simple question arises: how should the law protect a digital twin once it becomes a commercially valuable asset?

To answer this question, it is worth examining the existing legal protections.

The digital twin did not emerge outside the law. Long before AI entered our daily lives various areas of law were already protecting the components that now make up a digital twin.

Before a digital twin can exist, someone must first create the content that trains it.

As AI became part of everyday business, governments and international organisations also introduced AI governance frameworks to encourage transparency, accountability, human oversight and the responsible development of AI systems. Data processing agreements (DPAs) have also become an important contractual tool to regulate how personal information is collected, processed and stored.

These frameworks play an essential role in promoting responsible AI. Their primary focus is the development and operation of AI systems. The commercialisation of the digital twin introduces an additional commercial relationship that extends beyond the AI system itself. For that reason, these legal protections are not competing with one another. They complement one another.

Each protects one element of the digital twin, but once these protected elements are lawfully collected, connected and trained, they begin to function together as a digital twin that may itself generate commercial value. This is where the legal discussion naturally moves to the next stage.

The question is no longer who owns the photograph, the voice recording or the personal data. Existing laws already answer those questions. The legal discussion changes when a digital twin enters the marketplace.

The commercialisation of the digital twin begins when an individual authorises it to participate in commercial activities. At that moment, the digital twin moves from being a technological development to becoming part of a legal and commercial relationship.

Like every commercial relationship, trust becomes the foundation of that relationship. In practice, this begins with informed consent. The individual should understand what materials will be used to train the digital twin, how the digital twin may be used commercially, who may use it and under which conditions that use may continue. These considerations define the commercial relationship between the individual and the digital twin from the very beginning.

The rise of digital twins

Today, digital twins are beginning to appear in advertising campaigns, customer service, education, entertainment, healthcare, retail and social media. They can promote products, communicate with customers, create digital content, speak different languages and represent individuals without requiring their physical presence.

In many cases, the value of the digital twin lies in the ability to bring all these elements together and use them as a single digital identity. This is what makes the digital twin commercially valuable.

A well-trained digital twin may continue creating content long after the original photograph was taken or the original interview was recorded. It may participate in advertising campaigns, deliver educational courses, communicate with customers or support a brand across different platforms. For example, an actor may stop filming advertisements altogether while continuing to license a previously trained digital twin for campaigns authorised under a commercial agreement.

The commercial value is no longer attached to a single creative work. It becomes attached to the digital twin itself. Here time also becomes an important consideration. People naturally evolve, grow old, follow different career paths. A digital twin does none of these things unless it continues to receive new information through authorised training and updates. Over time, the digital twin may no longer reflect the person as accurately as it once did. Therefore, protecting the commercialisation of a digital twin is about how it continues to evolve over time.

This commercial use also changes the relationship between the individual and the digital twin. The individual remains the owner of his or her rights, while the digital twin becomes the tool through which many of those rights are commercially used.

As this commercial relationship grows, lawyers are increasingly asked practical questions.

Can a digital twin be licensed?

Can it be transferred to another company?

Who controls future training?

Who receives the income generated by the digital twin?

What happens when the commercial relationship ends?

Can an existing digital twin continue to be used after the agreement is terminated?

These are no longer technical questions. They are commercial questions, and commercial questions eventually become legal questions. The answers will often depend on existing laws, carefully drafted contracts and the specific facts of each case.

However, they also show that the commercialisation of the digital twin creates legal considerations that extend beyond the protection of the individual materials from which it was originally built.

As the commercial use of digital twins continues to grow, lawyers may increasingly find themselves advising not only on copyright, image rights or data protection, but also on the legal relationship between an individual and a commercially operated digital twin.

At every stage of this journey, the law remained present, and contracts continued to define the relationship between the parties. Nothing changed, except that the digital twin itself became commercially valuable. Its commercial value came from these protected elements working together. This article refers to these observations as the digital twin theory.

The theory does not introduce a new legal right, it simply examines the existing legal protections through one commercial perspective. Instead of examining each legal framework separately, it considers how they work together once the digital twin becomes part of a commercial relationship. Looking at the digital twin this way helps answer practical legal questions.

How should it be licensed?

Who may continue training it?

How should revenue be shared?

What happens when the commercial agreement ends?

How should future versions be managed?

Conclusion

As digital twins become part of everyday business, lawyers may increasingly need to advise clients not only on the legal protection of individual rights, but also on the commercialisation of digital twins derived from those rights.

The digital twin theory is ultimately an invitation to view this commercial relationship through a single connected legal lens.

The commercialisation of digital twins is no longer a future possibility, it is already part of today’s business environment. Brands are using AI-generated ambassadors, creators are licensing their digital presence, companies are investing in digital twin technologies and lawyers are beginning to draft agreements that did not exist a few years ago.

As digital twins become part of everyday business, lawyers may increasingly find themselves advising clients on questions that span multiple areas of law. The challenge may no longer be deciding which legal framework applies, but rather how these existing frameworks can work together to protect the commercialisation of digital twins.

Perhaps this is the next natural step in the evolution of intellectual property and commercial law. Not because the law is changing, but because the way people create commercial value is changing.

The digital twin may, therefore, become one of the first commercial assets whose value depends not on one legal right, but on the careful coordination of many legal rights working together.

Whether this observation develops into a new area of legal practice is a question that only time can answer.

For now, it is simply an invitation to begin a conversation.

Every one of us is already building a digital twin. The legal question is no longer whether it exists, but whether it should be protected before it becomes a commercial asset.