Celebrity Endorsement in the AI Era: How Synthetic Endorsements Featuring Living and Deceased Celebrities Shape Brand Opportunism Across Campaign Purposes

Abstract

Generative AI is reshaping how living and deceased celebrities can be represented and reused in media and marketplace communication. Yet little is known about how consumers respond to AI-generated celebrity representations. Drawing on attribution theory and social contract theory, this study employs a 2 (represented celebrity life status: living vs. deceased) × 2 (campaign type: commercial vs. prosocial) between-subjects experiment with 229 U.S. participants. Results showed no significant main effect of celebrity life status on perceived brand opportunism. Instead, a significant interaction effect emerged, and the use of a deceased celebrity increased opportunism perceptions only in commercial campaigns. Brand opportunism was negatively associated with purchase intention and attitudes toward the celebrity’s public image, but indirect effects emerged only in the commercial condition. The findings contribute to human-computer interaction, synthetic media, and AI-generated advertising research while offering practical guidance for more cautious and context-sensitive use of AI-generated celebrity endorsers.