During hydration breaks at the 2026 World Cup, Argentine broadcasts showed a young Maradona in the national team jersey, speaking directly to the camera. The footage came from no archive. It was an AI reconstruction of his face and voice, produced for a campaign by BetWarrior, an online betting company, called "Gente con pelotas" (People with Guts).
Who authorized what
The use was authorized by the family. Fernando Burlando, attorney for Dalma and Gianinna Maradona, two of the footballer's five children, publicly confirmed that the authorization came from the heirs, though not all of them agreed. According to his own words, the decision was made "democratically" among the five siblings.
No one can know what Maradona would have wanted in this specific case, and the dilemma doesn't depend on that. Consent for these uses ends up being granted by third parties, over decisions the subject can no longer veto, correct, or stop. In life, any public figure can turn down a brand. After death, that ability to say no is distributed among heirs, production companies, and funds managing the estate.
A format more than a decade old
BetWarrior didn't invent the format. Tupac performed at Coachella in 2012 as a hologram. Michael Jackson returned to sing at the Billboard Music Awards in 2014. Whitney Houston and Maria Callas had full tours across multiple countries between 2020 and 2022, both produced by the same company specializing in these spectacles.
In March of this year, Soda Stereo premiered "Ecos" at the Movistar Arena in Buenos Aires, featuring a Cerati recreated through artificial intelligence, 3D rendering, and motion capture. Both opening night performances sold out.
The pattern repeats across music, film, and now advertising. Someone with the legal right to decide authorizes bringing back a figure who can no longer weigh in on how they're being used.
What sets this case apart
The Cerati and Whitney holograms sell nostalgia and catalog, a delicate but adjacent territory to the artist's actual work. The BetWarrior Maradona sells sports betting during a World Cup, in a country where 6 out of 10 teenagers are exposed to online gambling according to a study by Cruz Roja Argentina.
That difference in vehicle matters. The authorization is technically equivalent in both cases, but the destination of the likeness is not.
The regulatory context has also started to shift. Denmark pushed through a copyright reform that treats a person's facial features, voice, and body as protectable assets, with a 50-year window after death and the right of heirs to demand removal of unauthorized content. Tennessee, in the United States, updated its personality rights framework with the ELVIS Act, effective July 2024, which adds voice as a protected attribute specifically in response to AI cloning. In the US Congress, the NO FAKES Act is advancing, which would make it illegal to create or distribute digital replicas of a person's voice or image without consent.
These frameworks don't resolve the core dilemma: in all of them, post-mortem consent still rests with third parties. They do recognize, however, that a person's identity is a licensable asset, and that like any licensable asset it needs administration rules, time limits, and accountable parties.
AI doesn't wait
The same authorization mechanism serves a tribute concert and a betting spot. Technology doesn't distinguish between the two uses, and the law, for now, doesn't either. That gap leaves a gray zone worth monitoring closely, because the same mechanism that authorizes a tribute can end up putting the face of a global icon on advertising for a product that harms his own country.