Kalshi AI Ad Drama: Creator Says His Video Was Stolen and Race-Swapped

YouTuber Elliot Choy makes videos about apartment hunting in New York. On September 23, 2026, he posted a side-by-side comparison on X that sparked a public fight between a creator and a brand. On one side sat his own clip: Choy moving into his New York apartment, computer and books behind him. On the other sat a Kalshi AI ad that copied the same framing, the same setup, and the same room. The man on screen was no longer Choy. He was white.

Choy accused the company of taking his video, using artificial intelligence to replace his face, and running the result as a Kalshi AI ad. The accusation spread quickly, and by the next day, the story had been picked up by outlets including Business Insider. For a company already deep in legal fights, the Kalshi AI ad backlash added a new front: creators saying the brand was stealing their likenesses and changing their race in the process.

How the ad was spotted

The video at the center of the Kalshi AI ad dispute was ordinary content. Choy had filmed it for his channel, where he documents apartment life in New York City. When he posted the comparison, the resemblance was plain. The Kalshi AI ad matched his video still for still: the same angle, the same background clutter, the same apartment. Only the person in frame had changed.

Choy wrote that Kalshi appeared to have taken his video, turned him into a white man, and run it as an ad. After the post spread, NPR correspondent Bobby Allyn looked into the footage and confirmed the ad was real. Kalshi has not disputed that the ad ran. The question is who made it, and why nobody asked Choy first.

Kalshi points to an unnamed agency

A Kalshi spokesperson said in a statement that the Kalshi AI ad was about four months old and had been supplied by an agency that produced the creative. The spokesperson said Kalshi no longer uses AI-generated content that depicts people and that the company was reviewing its relationship with the agency behind the spot. The spokesperson declined to identify that agency.

What the statement did not include was an apology to Choy, or any mention of paying him for the video Kalshi copied. For creators watching the story, that omission stood out. The company blamed the production of the Kalshi AI ad on a contractor, distanced itself from the ad's content, and left the question of compensation unanswered.

A second creator says it happened to him in June

Choy was not the first creator to call out Kalshi over an AI ad built from his work. In June, Pushpek Sidhu, a 29-year-old Toronto creator who posts about food and sports, described a similar experience.

Sidhu told Business Insider that someone identifying himself as a Kalshi representative reached out to propose a collaboration. Sidhu said he never heard from the representative again. Later, while in Houston for a World Cup game, he saw a Kalshi ad that recreated one of his own videos almost completely, down to the near-identical script and gestures. Like Choy, Sidhu said he had been replaced on screen by a white man. Sidhu said the company could easily have paid him a small amount for the video instead of copying it.

Two creators, months apart, saying their content was taken and their faces replaced. For online audiences, that repetition is what turned a single complaint into a story about how Kalshi buys its marketing.

The bigger fight over AI ads

The episode lands as advertisers rush to use generative AI in campaigns. Kalshi was an early mover, releasing an AI-generated spot during the 2025 NBA Finals that drew industry attention. Resemble AI, a company that tracks deepfakes for government and enterprise clients, said its global search of Meta's ad library found that about 9 percent of recent ads across industries contain generative AI. Zohaib Ahmed, the company's chief executive, said the Kalshi AI ad that Choy flagged could have started from a thumbnail of a social video, with a different face swapped in.

Ahmed said the legal line around such ads is difficult to draw, but the ethical one is clearer: a company took someone else's content and repurposed it, while the original creator spent money and effort making it. Mick Feldman, director of client services at the influencer marketing agency The Now, called swapping one creator's face for another without consent "completely unethical." Feldman said the standard practice is to pay creators for the rights to their content, and that licensing an existing video typically costs far less than producing a new one.

Feldman added that it was hard for creators to monitor whether their videos end up in AI ads. Digital watermarks exist, he said, but the practice is uncommon, and few creators think of themselves as likely targets. Few expect an ordinary apartment move-in video to end up repurposed in an AI ad with a different face.

As of September 26, Kalshi has not identified the agency behind the Kalshi AI ad or said whether Choy or Sidhu would be paid. The Kalshi AI ad dispute also comes as the company faces scrutiny from state regulators, including in New York, over whether it operates as an unlicensed gambling business. Kalshi denies that characterization. For now, the creators' complaint remains unresolved, and the company's statement has not satisfied the audience it was meant to calm.

Read more on how the Kalshi AI ad backlash unfolded.