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From Taylor Swift to Joe Biden, no one is immune to deepfake schemes, but another bill just introduced in the Senate is looking to end that problem.
The Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act would hold individuals, platforms, and companies liable for producing, hosting, or sharing an unauthorized deepfake, which includes the voice and visual likenesses of creators and individuals.
Like copyright complaints, an online service hosting the unauthorized replica would have to take it down upon notice from a rights holder, with exclusions for things like documentaries, biographical works, criticism, or parody. X may run into trouble there; it has rejected requests to remove content of late, instead preferring a Community Note (or colorful tweets) over deletion.
The NO FAKES Act would also limit licenses for people's likenesses to 10 years at a time.
"Everyone deserves the right to own and protect their voice and likeness, no matter if you're Taylor Swift or anyone else," says bill sponsor Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE). "Generative AI can be used as a tool to foster creativity, but that can’t come at the expense of the unauthorized exploitation of anyone’s voice or likeness."
The NO FAKES Act is similar to another bill Congress is working on that would make explicit deepfakes illegal after Taylor Swift had AI-generated pornography of her spread across X earlier this year. Where the aforementioned DEFIANCE Act focused primarily on pornographic content, the NO FAKES Act includes other types of deepfakes as well.
The NO FAKES Act has the support of the Screen Actor's Guild, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, Sony, and Disney. AI companies have also jumped on board, with OpenAI saying that "creators and artists should be protected from improper impersonation."