Episode 150: Interview With Gary McCoy The Creator of Weir Ai.

As artificial intelligence evolves faster than policy can track, Gary McCoy and his team at WEIR AI are stepping into the breach. Their mission? To give individuals—not platforms—more control over how their identity is used in the age of deepfakes, cloned voices, and unauthorized digital replicas. With the recent debut of their platform at the 2025 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, WEIR AI is already making waves in the conversation about ethical AI, privacy, and digital ownership.

Co-founded by Gary McCoy and Tal Hassner—both former senior figures at Meta—WEIR AI was born from a place of both innovation and personal experience. McCoy previously led privacy and data clean rooms at Snowflake and worked in product leadership roles at Microsoft and Skype. But it was at Meta, in the Applied Machine Learning group, where he and Hassner first crossed paths. There, they worked on high-stakes projects involving facial recognition, privacy rights, and real-world regulatory pressure.

“We were dealing with some of the worst headlines that came out of Meta during that time,” McCoy recalls. “We saw firsthand how fragile digital identity can be and how hard it was to protect people—technically, legally, and ethically. That struggle made us realize there had to be a better way.”

That “better way” became WEIR AI, a privacy-centric platform designed to protect individuals’ identities and give them ownership over how their name, image, and likeness (NIL) are used across the internet. The company operates on a core principle: total control for the user. Participants can opt in, define their own identity rules (including usage restrictions or monetization preferences), and rest easy knowing their digital presence is being monitored and protected—automatically.

“This isn't just about celebrities,” McCoy explains. “High-profile doesn’t just mean Hollywood. It’s journalists, teachers, political figures—anyone whose likeness could be exploited. We give them a way to say, ‘This is how I want my identity to be used,’ and we work to enforce that with the platforms.”

What makes WEIR AI different is its proactive stance on both compliance and ethical design. McCoy and Hassner structured the company as a Public Benefit Corporation, embedding values like consumer privacy and data security into its DNA. The system also avoids “rights grabs”—common in some identity protection platforms—where users unknowingly forfeit control over their image.

The service is easy to use. Individuals can sign up using their name and email, then choose between basic and enhanced protection. The latter includes biometric verification and custom rule-setting for how their identity can (or cannot) be used. The platform then monitors digital spaces and flags any unauthorized uses—whether that’s a fake AI-generated ad, a cloned voiceover, or a manipulated video.

“If someone uses your likeness in a way that violates your preferences, we don’t just alert you—we work with platforms to either enforce takedown or initiate monetization, depending on what you’ve authorized,” says McCoy. “This is about giving power back to the people.”

As platforms race to adopt generative AI tools and user protections remain inconsistent, WEIR AI fills a critical void—one that regulators haven’t yet caught up with. “There are states like Texas and California starting to lead the charge, but federally? It’s still a mess,” McCoy says. “We can’t wait for the laws to catch up. Our approach is hybrid: stay compliant globally, but act now to protect people.”

With a growing team of advisors and an unwavering commitment to doing things right—even when it costs more—WEIR AI is positioning itself as a trusted steward of digital identity. For McCoy, that’s the long game. “We’ve made intentional decisions at every step—where we get our data, how we train our models, how we treat consent—because we’re building a system we want our own families to use.”

In a world of deepfakes and data breaches, WEIR AI is offering something rare: peace of mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI8shESNlNQ

🎧 To hear the full conversation with Gary McCoy, tune in to his episode on The Savoir Faire Audio Experience, streaming now.