California passed laws to protect artists from artificial intelligence

Advances in generative AI are threatening the livelihoods of many creative professions. Actors fear that imitations of their images may become commonplace. California Governor Gavin Newsom signed two bills into law on September 17 to help actors, musicians and other performers protect their digital copies of audio and visual productions from being copied by artificial intelligence.

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The signing of these bills was a response to legitimate public concerns about the boom in artificial intelligence, during which large language models, trained on relevant material, are able to create fake videos, images and audio materials that closely imitate real people. In this regard, many experts have raised legal and ethical issues regarding the use of AI.

One of the bills signed by Newsom requires that “contracts must specify the use of AI-generated digital copies of the performer’s voice or likeness, and the performer must be professionally represented in contract negotiations.”

Another bill would prohibit “the commercial use of digital copies of deceased artists in films, television shows, video games, audiobooks, sound recordings and more without first obtaining the consent of those artists’ heirs.”

In March, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed a similar bill aimed at protecting artists, including musicians, from the unauthorized use of their likenesses and voices by artificial intelligence.

The US administration has previously tried to pressure lawmakers to regulate AI, but the polarized US Congress, where Republicans control the House of Representatives and Democrats control the Senate, has made little progress in developing and passing effective legislation.

The European Union was able to move further in this direction: the European “AI Law”, based on risk assessment, came into force on August 1, 2024. The provisions of the document will be implemented in stages until mid-2026. In just six months, it plans to enforce bans on several uses of AI in specific scenarios.