Japanese Company Wants to Buy Your Face and Sell It as a Hyper-Realistic Mask

By Spooky on November 25th, 2020 Category: News

Would you ever sell your face? If the answer is yes, there is a Japanese company that wants to hear from you. It’s in the business of buying the rights to people’s faces so it can sell them in the form of hyper-realistic 3D-printed masks.

Ever since Kamenya Omoto, a Tokyo-based specialty mask maker and store, announced its intention to buy the rights to people’s faces for 40,000 yen ($380) a pop, it’s been overwhelmed with offers. The company wants to reproduce people’s faces in the form of hyper-realistic masks and sell them for an estimated ($940). If a mask proves popular with clients, the person whose appearance inspired it stands to earn a percentage of the profits as well. The controversial project, named “That Face”, reportedly aims to give a sci-fi twist to the idea of buying and selling faces.

In an era where privacy and personal data seems more important than ever, the concept of selling the rights to your face for a profit seems very strange, but judging by the response Kamenya Omoto got in the last month, it stands to become very popular as well.

After announcing plans to purchase the rights to people’s faces for their That Face initiative, Kamenya Omoto was inundated by offers and questions about the project. Even though the program was limited to Tokyo, interest was so great that the company decided to pick faces through a lottery.

Anyone over 20-years-old and based in Tokyo can apply to sell their face for a profit, but the company makes it clear that those chosen are not allowed to reveal their identities. The mask maker also agrees not to disclose your likeness or personal information to anyone beyond the mask making process.

Customers interested in wearing someone else’s face as a mask can currently pre-order one based on the face of a Kamenya Omoto shop-keeper, but if you want options, the company announces more available faces soon.

”We will buy and sell your faces,” the Kamenya Omoto website reads. “A science-fiction story has now become reality. No one yet knows what will happen to a world full of the same faces as you.”

Kamenya Omoto isn’t the first Japanese company to make ultra-realistic masks of people’s faces. Back in 2011 we wrote about REAL-f a company who specialized in 3D masks of anyone willing to pay for them. Prices back then were around $4,000, so the concept never really took off. Then, earlier this year, we featured this 3D-printing expert who created an eerie mask of his own face.