Tennessee's ELVIS Act: A Fresh Law Regarding Artificial Intelligence Duplication of Celebrity Likenesses
In a significant move to safeguard artists and public figures from the misuse of their digital likenesses, voices, and images, the ELVIS Act was enacted in Tennessee on July 21, 2024. This landmark law marks the first attempt in the United States to specifically protect artists from digital misuse powered by AI.
The ELVIS Act places increased responsibility on AI platforms to ensure that likenesses, voices, and images are used with proper authorization. This could lead to the development of new consent management systems, prompting AI platforms to rethink their content policies, particularly regarding public figures or deceased individuals whose likenesses are used posthumously.
The act significantly strengthens penalties for the unauthorized use of an individual's protected attributes, such as their voice, name, photograph, or likeness, allowing victims or their estates to pursue lawsuits for damages. It also narrows certain defences that could be used in commercial contexts, ensuring that all parties involved are held accountable for the misuse of protected personal attributes.
The ELVIS Act expands Tennessee's Personal Rights Protection Act by adding "voice" to the list of protected personal attributes, including both real and AI-generated imitations. It also sets the stage for balancing innovation with ethical AI use in the creative industries, presenting opportunities for AI companies to innovate within a regulated framework, creating new business models focused on responsible AI.
However, the act creates challenges in distinguishing between real and AI-generated content, complicating enforcement. As of mid-2025, federal legislation addressing the use of artificial intelligence to create unauthorized likenesses, voices, and images of public figures is still under development. The recently passed Take it Down Act makes sharing AI-generated deepfake pornographic content illegal at the federal level, but broader protections relating to all AI-generated unauthorized likenesses and voices remain under consideration.
The NO FAKES Act, recently reintroduced in Congress with bipartisan support, aims to create a new intellectual property right protecting individuals’ digital likenesses and voices from unauthorized AI-generated replication. It mandates censorship of such digital replicas and regulates the underlying AI technologies. The NO FAKES Act has backing from the entertainment industry, labor unions such as SAG-AFTRA, and some AI firms.
In the judicial context, courts are beginning to address challenges posed by deepfakes, but no uniform federal evidentiary rule specifically targeting AI-generated likenesses has been adopted yet.
The ELVIS Act extends protection beyond an individual's lifetime, ensuring the rights to their name, likeness, voice, and image are preserved after death. It reflects growing concern within the entertainment industry about AI-generated content and its impact on artists' creative rights and reputations. As technology continues to evolve, the landscape of AI regulation is expected to follow suit, offering a dynamic and evolving field for legal and technological innovation.
[1] [Take it Down Act](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2303) [2] [NO FAKES Act](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/4471) [3] [Federal Evidentiary Rules](https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_901) [4] [SAG-AFTRA's stance on AI and deepfakes](https://www.sagaftra.org/news/sag-aftra-statement-ai-and-deepfakes)
In light of the tech-driven era, the expanding use of AI in entertainment could prompt AI platforms to reconsider their content policies, as the ELVIS Act promotes the development of new consent management systems for music and other creative works. With AI-generated content becoming increasingly advanced, the balancing act between innovation and ethics in AI use within the creative industries is a significant concern, as highlighted by theNO FAKES Act and SAG-AFTRA's stance on AI and deepfakes.
