Committee approves 'No Fakes Act' to extend protections for voice and likeness from AI-generated replicas

House Bill 566, introduced as the Nurture Originals Foster Art and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act, advanced from committee after testimony from industry groups and a voice vote on March 3.

Representative Hong, the bill’s author, told the State Planning and Community Affairs Committee the measure would protect artists and other individuals from unauthorized computer-generated recreations of voice and visual likeness, including those produced by generative artificial intelligence, and would create a registry administered by the Secretary of State for postmortem rights.

The bill’s stated purpose is to bar nonconsensual digital replicas and to provide civil remedies for violations. “This bill will address those nonconsensual digital replications in these kinds of audiovisual works, images, or sound recordings,” Representative Hong said during the hearing. The substitute form of the bill includes language designed to limit liability for online platforms unless the platform has actual knowledge of an unauthorized replica and fails to remove it.

Witnesses presented contrasting views. Tom Mann, state policy manager for the Computer and Communications…