WASHINGTON D.C. (CelebrityAccess) — On May 21st, Country recording artist and philanthropist Martina McBride will join RIAA Chairman Mitch Glazer to testify before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law in support of the NO FAKES Act.
If enacted, the legislation would establish new federally protected property rights aimed at protecting an individual’s voice and likeness from nonconsensual replication by artificial intelligence systems, while attempting to balance key First Amendment protections regarding free speech.
The proposed legislation would also provide individuals who have been the victims of nonconsensual digital counterfeiting with a legal avenue to seek redress.
The NO FAKES Act has bipartisan support from Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) in the Senate, as well as Representatives María Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Madeleine Dean (D-PA), Nathaniel Moran (R-TX), and Becca Balint (D-VT).
The legislation has also received support from key stakeholders in the tech industry, including IBM, YouTube (Google), and OpenAI, among others.
Critics worry the act could enable overreach by rights holders, stifling satire, parody, or transformative works that use AI-generated likenesses of public figures.
“The best we can say about NO FAKES is that it has provisions protecting individuals with unequal bargaining power in negotiations around the use of their likeness. For example, the new right can’t be completely transferred to someone else (like a film studio or advertising agency) while the person is alive, so a person can’t be pressured or tricked into handing over total control of their public identity. (Their heirs still can, but the dead celebrity presumably won’t care.) And minors have some additional protections, such as a limit on how long their rights can be licensed before they become adults,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation said of the act in an executive summary in 2024.
