Key point: The rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence (AI) facilitates the creation of highly realistic digital replicas of an individual’s image, voice, or other likeness, fueling disputes over unauthorized deepfakes, synthetic voices, and AI-generated impersonations that federal legislation might address.

Until now, individuals seeking to challenge the unauthorized use of their identity have largely relied on a patchwork of state right-of-publicity and misappropriation laws. In recent years, eight states (Tennessee, California, Illinois, New York, Utah, Arkansas, Montana, and Washington) have enacted legislation specifically addressing AI-generated digital replicas of a person’s voice or likeness. These statutes vary considerably in scope, with some focused primarily on performers, celebrities, or postmortem publicity rights, while others provide broader protections against unauthorized digital replicas of identifiable individuals. Congress may soon change that framework.

On June 22, 2026, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously advanced the bipartisan Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act, moving the legislation one step closer to becoming federal law. If enacted, the bill would establish a new federal right to authorize the use of an individual’s voice or visual likeness in digital replicas and would preempt certain inconsistent state laws. The bill’s passage would represent a significant evolution in the law governing identity rights and would have serious implications for businesses that use digital replicas of employees’ or consumers’ name, image, or likeness (NIL).

What Would the NO FAKES Act Do?

The NO FAKES Act would create a federal right against—and a corresponding cause of action allowing individuals to bring civil lawsuits for—the unauthorized display, distribution, transmission, communication of, or otherwise making available to the public a digital replica of an individual’s voice or visual likeness, or in connection with certain products or services that produce digital replicas of individuals. This represents a significant departure from the traditional right-of-publicity framework, which has historically been governed almost entirely by state statutes and common law.

Unlike traditional deepfake legislation that focuses on election interference or nonconsensual intimate imagery, the NO FAKES Act broadly addresses realistic computer-generated recreations of a person’s likeness across a variety of contexts. For example, while the federal Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks (TAKE IT DOWN) Act focuses on the publication of nonconsensual intimate visual depictions, including AI-generated intimate images, the NO FAKES Act addresses unauthorized AI-generated replicas of an individual’s voice or visual likeness across commercial settings. Nor is the legislation limited to celebrities and performers; instead, its protections would extend broadly to all individuals, and the bill proposes statutory damages ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 for each violative replica. As a result, unauthorized AI impersonations affecting employees, executives, students, consumers, and private citizens could all potentially fall within the statute’s scope.

The NO FAKES Act would also establish liability for online services under certain circumstances. Similar to other federal online content statutes, the bill includes a notice-and-takedown framework under which qualifying online services may retain safe-harbor protections if they comply with statutory requirements after receiving notice of unauthorized digital replicas. The bill contains numerous exclusions for expressive works and other protected activities, including news reporting, public affairs, sports broadcasts, documentaries, parody, satire, criticism, commentary, scholarship, and certain advertisements for those protected works.

The Shift in Right-of-Publicity Law

Claims involving the unauthorized use of an individual’s name, image, likeness, or voice have traditionally arisen under state right-of-publicity statutes or common-law misappropriation doctrines. All 50 states and the District of Columbia recognize some form of right of publicity, but the scope of those rights varies considerably. As AI-generated content becomes increasingly sophisticated, this state-by-state framework has created growing uncertainty for businesses operating nationally. An AI-generated or -altered voice recording or visual advertisement that depicts customers or employees may be lawful under one state’s publicity laws while exposing a company to liability in another jurisdiction.

The NO FAKES Act seeks to address that inconsistency by establishing a nationwide framework governing unauthorized digital replicas while preempting certain overlapping state laws. Traditional state right-of-publicity claims would continue to exist in many contexts, but disputes specifically involving AI-generated digital replicas would be analyzed under a federal statutory framework. The Act would not preempt causes of action under state laws in existence as of January 2, 2025 regarding digital replicas (or products and services capable of producing digital replicas), nor would it preempt causes of action under state laws specifically regulating sexually explicit or election-related digital replicas. At least two state laws might avoid preemption under these carve-outs.

Tennessee led the way in 2024 when it enacted the Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security (ELVIS) Act, which, among other things, created a private right of action against any person who distributes, transmits, or otherwise makes available an algorithm, software, tool, or other technology, service, or device whose primary purpose or function is to produce a particular, identifiable individual’s photograph, voice, or likeness, without that individual’s consent. More recently, in December 2025, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed Senate Bill S.8420A into law, requiring conspicuous disclosure when an advertisement includes a “synthetic performer.” Under the New York law, a “synthetic performer” is a digitally created asset that is created, reproduced, or modified by computer, using generative AI or a software algorithm, intended to create the impression that the asset is engaging in an audiovisual and/or visual performance of a human performer who is not recognizable as any identifiable natural performer. It remains to be seen how the ELVIS Act and S.8420A would interact with the NO FAKES Act if the federal bill is enacted. Because the ELVIS Act predates the NO FAKES Act’s January 2, 2025 preemption cutoff, it would likely fall within the bill’s carve-out for pre-existing state digital replica laws. Meanwhile S.8420A—enacted after the cutoff, drafted as a disclosure-and-transparency measure, and framed in terms of “synthetic performers” instead of “digital replicas”—presents a closer question.

Practical Considerations

Regardless of whether the NO FAKES Act is ultimately enacted in its current form, its advancement reflects the broader trend that lawmakers expect businesses to implement governance measures addressing AI-related risk. Organizations that use, deploy, or procure generative AI systems capable of producing digital replicas or materially editing content may want to consider:

• Inventorying AI tools that process individuals’ voices, images, or likenesses;
• Establishing policies governing when employee, customer, executive, or third-party likenesses may be used to train or generate AI content;
• Reviewing contracts with AI vendors to determine how voice, image, and likeness are collected, retained, licensed, and used; and
• Implementing human review processes (including procedures to obtain consent, as appropriate) for marketing materials or other public-facing AI-generated content that may depict identifiable individuals.

Companies should also remember that the NO FAKES Act would not preempt certain other legal obligations. Depending on the circumstances, AI-generated content may continue to implicate copyright law, trademark law, state privacy statutes, biometric privacy laws, unfair competition claims, and employment laws.

Conclusion

The NO FAKES Act has advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee with unanimous support, but a long path remains before the bill becomes law. Nonetheless, the Act’s bipartisan sponsorship, unanimous committee vote, and support from stakeholders in the entertainment industry suggest that lawmakers continue to view unauthorized AI impersonation as an area warranting a uniform federal framework, a significant shift away from the traditional state-by-state approach. Marketing departments and other organizations using generative AI may want to address governance of AI-generated content early to reduce legal risk while continuing to leverage the benefits of AI, particularly where content involves an identifiable person’s voice or visual likeness.