Last week, Ensemble portfolio company Loti AI was once again featured in a major publication—this time in Variety.
(See previous features in Rolling Stone and Forbes)
Originally built to protect celebrities' likenesses from harmful or contractually prohibited use, Loti is now making headlines with a bold move: launching free likeness protection for everyone.
- AI-Powered Detection + Industry-Leading Takedowns. Loti scans the internet using cutting-edge facial and voice recognition to catch unauthorized uses of individual likenesses—achieving takedown success 95% of the time, usually in under 17 hours.
- Putting Control Back in Your Hands. “Our goal is simple," Luke Arrigoni told Variety. "To help you reach zero images of you online that you haven’t approved.”
Deepfake Detection Firm Loti AI Expands Access For All Users: ‘These Threats Are No Longer Limited to Celebrities’ (EXCLUSIVE)
Deepfake detection and takedown service Loti AI revealed that its likeness protection technology is being made publicly available. Previously only offered to public figures and celebrities, the company will now offer tools to anyone “who wants to safeguard their digital reputation.”
From Hollywood to Main Street
Ensemble backed Loti AI at the seed stage after quickly identifying founder Luke Arrigoni as an exceptional operator—someone whose technical talent was matched by a rare knack for building solutions from first principles. Luke doesn’t just have technical fluency—he’s a professional problem-solver. With a background that spans Columbia’s math program, quantitative strategy at CAA, and a wide-ranging career in bespoke data science, Luke has built his career by taking on unsolved problems and designing his own tools to crack them.At Loti, that problem-solving mentality takes form in a highly mathematical approach to facial and voice recognition. Rather than relying on off-the-shelf models, Luke’s team architected their own system from scratch, in a way that improves as more real-world data flows in. The result is a constantly strengthening model of a person’s likeness—able to detect and remove unauthorized deepfake content across the internet, even as generative tools get more sophisticated. As Luke puts it, Loti’s model gets more precise as the fakes get more real.
That precision and reliability led to quick traction in Hollywood, where likeness rights have become a central concern for talent agencies and their clients. Luke was early to recognize that the legal and reputational stakes of deepfakes would accelerate faster than public policy could keep up. By offering both detection and takedown infrastructure—and by enforcing contractual usage of likenesses—Loti quickly built relationships with major agencies and public figures.
The public platform will offer free and paid membership options on a rolling basis, making it accessible to anyone who wants to safeguard their digital identity. The move comes as the risks of deepfakes, impersonations, and unauthorized content grow rapidly, affecting not just high-profile individuals but everyday users.
“The internet is getting out of hand,” CEO Luke Arrigoni told Variety. “People’s digital reputations are at risk like never before. From deepfakes to unauthorized illicit content, these threats aren’t just targeting celebrities anymore. That’s why we’re stepping up to offer tools that let everyone take back control.”
Ensemble Data Advantage: Following talent through the infrastructure stack
When generative AI burst into the mainstream, the world raced to imagine what it could build. Every pitch deck had a chatbot. Every product roadmap had a new AI layer. The energy was real, but so was the noise. One of the biggest advantages of Ensemble's data platform is that it encourages us to pause amid hype. When industries are swarmed with attention, we don't have to rush to the table. We just step back and watch where the talent goes.Sometimes that leads us to a specific industry. Sometimes it surfaces a founding team before they’ve even announced their company. But often, it points us to the layer in the stack where the real innovation still needs to happen.
Ensemble backed Loti after seeing that Luke Arrigoni's team was not only the most sophisticated in the space, but that they were attacking an overlooked layer of AI infrastructure.
Read Ensemble's investment announcement for Loti AI
More of Loti AI in the headlines
Rolling Stone: How Celebrities Are Fighting AI Deepfakes of Themselves
Luke Arrigoni, founder and CEO of 'likeness protection company' Loti AI, explains what can be done about unwanted digital doppelgängers
Portfolio Headlines: ICON + Lennar double down, Saronic earns praise
ICON and Lennar announced expanding partnership, and Saronic continues to garner recognition.
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