NO FAKES Act
Last reviewed
Jun 7, 2026
Sources
20 citations
Review status
Source-backed
Revision
v1 · 2,132 words
Improve this article
Add missing citations, update stale details, or suggest a clearer explanation.
Suggest edit
CtrlK
Last reviewed
Jun 7, 2026
Sources
20 citations
Review status
Source-backed
Revision
v1 · 2,132 words
Add missing citations, update stale details, or suggest a clearer explanation.
The NO FAKES Act (Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe Act) is a proposed United States federal bill that would create a property-like federal "digital replication right" protecting a person's voice and visual likeness against unauthorized, computer-generated replicas, including those produced with generative AI. The bill has been led across successive Congresses by Senators Chris Coons (Democrat of Delaware) and Marsha Blackburn (Republican of Tennessee), joined in the Senate by Amy Klobuchar (Democrat of Minnesota) and Thom Tillis (Republican of North Carolina), with House companions led by Representatives Maria Salazar (Republican of Florida) and Madeleine Dean (Democrat of Pennsylvania). First introduced in 2024, the bill was reintroduced in April 2025 and revised again in May 2026. As of June 2026 it has not become law; it remains a pending bill referred to committee. The proposal has drawn an unusual coalition of entertainment and technology supporters, including SAG-AFTRA, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association, the Walt Disney Company, OpenAI, Google, and YouTube, while digital-rights and free-speech groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have argued it is overbroad and would chill lawful expression.
For most of the twentieth century, control over a person's name, image, and voice was governed by the patchwork right of publicity, a body of state law that varies widely in scope, duration, and whether it survives death. The rapid spread of deepfake tools and voice cloning software changed the stakes. Inexpensive generative AI systems, including consumer voice synthesizers from companies such as ElevenLabs, made it possible to synthesize a convincing imitation of a specific person's singing voice, speaking voice, or face from a small sample of reference material. High-profile incidents sharpened the concern, including the viral 2023 track "Heart on My Sleeve" that mimicked Drake and The Weeknd without their participation, and a 2024 dispute in which OpenAI paused a voice for its ChatGPT product after Scarlett Johansson said it resembled hers.
Sponsors framed the NO FAKES Act as a response to a gap in federal law. Existing intellectual-property regimes such as copyright protect particular recorded works but do not squarely protect the underlying voice or likeness of the person depicted, and the state right-of-publicity laws were seen as inconsistent and ill-suited to a national, internet-scale problem. Supporters in the music industry argued that without a federal floor, performers could be impersonated at scale with little recourse. The bill is frequently discussed alongside the Take It Down Act, a narrower deepfake measure focused on nonconsensual intimate imagery that President Trump signed into law on May 19, 2025, and the proposed DEFIANCE Act, which would create a civil cause of action for victims of sexually explicit digital forgeries. Unlike those measures, the NO FAKES Act is broader, reaching commercial misappropriation, fraud, and the replacement of performances, not only intimate or sexual content.
The NO FAKES Act would establish a new federal "digital replication right" giving each individual the ability to authorize the use of their voice or visual likeness in a "digital replica," defined as a newly created, computer-generated, highly realistic electronic representation that is readily identifiable as a particular person and that the person did not actually perform. The right would apply to all individuals, not only celebrities or registered public figures.
The right is structured as property-like but with limits intended to protect individuals from signing away their identity. During a person's lifetime the right is licensable but not fully assignable, and licenses are capped in duration, with the bill limiting a license to no more than ten years and requiring a reasonably specific written description of the intended uses. Crucially, the right does not end at death. The bill provides a postmortem term of ten years after the individual dies, renewable in additional increments up to a maximum of seventy years after death so long as the right is being actively and authoritatively used. After death the right becomes transferable and licensable by the person's heirs or estate, provided the transfer is in writing and signed.
To address platform liability, the bill borrows the safe-harbor architecture of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. An online service that hosts user-uploaded material, refers or links to material, or provides products and services capable of producing digital replicas can avoid liability if it designates an agent, adopts a policy against violations, and promptly removes or disables access to a flagged replica after receiving a compliant notice, without any general duty to monitor. Remedies include statutory damages, generally reported at $5,000 per violation against individual defendants and online service providers and up to $25,000 per work against other entities, alongside the option of actual damages and profits.
The bill includes First Amendment carve-outs. It exempts replicas used in bona fide news, public affairs, and sports broadcasts; documentary, biographical, and historical works; and uses for purposes of comment, criticism, scholarship, satire, or parody. Those exclusions narrow when a replica creates the false impression of an authentic work in which the person actually participated, and the sexually explicit-content carve-out is itself excluded so that intimate deepfakes cannot claim the exemptions. The 2025 text also preserved certain state laws in effect before January 2, 2025, and state laws addressing sexually explicit replicas.
| Provision | Substance as proposed |
|---|---|
| Core right | Federal "digital replication right" over an individual's voice and visual likeness |
| Who is covered | All individuals, living and deceased, not limited to celebrities |
| During life | Licensable but not freely assignable; licenses capped at 10 years with specific written terms |
| Postmortem term | 10 years after death, renewable up to a maximum of 70 years with continued authorized use |
| Transferability | Becomes transferable and licensable by heirs or estate after death, by signed writing |
| Platform safe harbor | DMCA-style notice and takedown; designated agent; no general monitoring duty |
| Remedies | Statutory damages (commonly cited at $5,000 to $25,000) plus actual damages and profits |
| Exclusions | News, sports, documentary, biographical, commentary, criticism, satire, and parody, with limits |
The effort began as a bipartisan discussion draft released in October 2023 by Senators Blackburn, Coons, Klobuchar, and Tillis, who invited public feedback before drafting formal text. The Senate version was first formally introduced on July 31, 2024, as S. 4875 in the 118th Congress by the same four senators. A House companion, H.R. 9551, followed on September 12, 2024, introduced by Representatives Salazar, Dean, Nathaniel Moran, Joe Morelle, Adam Schiff, and Rob Wittman. Neither chamber acted on the measure before the 118th Congress ended, so the bills expired.
The sponsors reintroduced the legislation in the 119th Congress on April 9, 2025, as S. 1367 in the Senate and H.R. 2794 in the House, retaining the same lead sponsors and adding cosponsors. The 2025 reintroduction was accompanied by an expanded list of industry endorsements that, for the first time, prominently included major technology platforms alongside entertainment groups.
On May 20, 2026, the sponsors introduced a revised version, styled the NO FAKES Act of 2026, that sought to answer criticism of earlier drafts. According to sponsor statements and contemporaneous reporting, the revision added a counter-notice procedure letting users challenge the removal of their material, new exemptions for qualifying work at libraries, archives, and research institutions, and more flexible enforcement rules tailored to different types of platforms. The bill remained referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee and had not been scheduled for a vote as of the article date.
The NO FAKES Act assembled a notably broad coalition that crossed the usual divide between rights holders and technology platforms. On the entertainment side, supporters have included SAG-AFTRA, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association, the Recording Academy, the National Music Publishers Association, the American Federation of Musicians, ASCAP, BMI, SoundExchange, and major record companies including Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music. On the technology side, OpenAI, Google, YouTube, IBM, Amazon, Adobe, and the stock-media company Getty have endorsed the bill, and Spotify joined the coalition when the revised version was introduced in May 2026, while saying there was still work to do. Hundreds of individual artists have backed the measure, and OpenAI publicly stated it was "happy to once again support the NO FAKES Act," praising the lead senators for their leadership.
Opposition has come chiefly from digital-rights and free-speech organizations. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been the most vocal critic, calling a 2025 revision "so much worse" and arguing that the bill would push platforms toward overbroad replica filters, create a "heckler's veto" through its takedown system, threaten open-source developers and small startups whose models might accidentally output a recognizable face or voice, and allow anyone to obtain a clerk-issued subpoena to unmask an anonymous uploader without proof. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression argued that most covered replicas are protected by the First Amendment and that the exemptions are "cold comfort" for creators who cannot afford to litigate. The Center for Democracy and Technology, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, and the American Library Association have raised related concerns about overbreadth and burdens on lawful speech and research. Critics have generally not disputed the goal of curbing malicious deepfakes; their objection is that a broad, property-style right enforced through fast takedowns risks sweeping in protected expression.
| Supporters | Opponents and critics |
|---|---|
| SAG-AFTRA, RIAA, Motion Picture Association, Recording Academy, NMPA | Electronic Frontier Foundation |
| Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music | Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression |
| Walt Disney Company | Center for Democracy and Technology |
| OpenAI, Google, YouTube, IBM | Computer and Communications Industry Association |
| Amazon, Adobe, Getty, Spotify (2026) | American Library Association |
As of June 2026 the NO FAKES Act is a bill, not a law. It has been introduced in three forms (the 2024 originals S. 4875 and H.R. 9551, the 2025 reintroductions S. 1367 and H.R. 2794, and the May 2026 revision), but no version has passed either chamber or been enacted. The most recent text was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee and awaited committee action. Reporting around the 2026 reintroduction noted that sponsors hoped to build momentum in the remaining time of the 119th Congress, but the bill's path remained uncertain given continued free-speech objections and the broader debate over AI regulation in the United States. The contrast with the Take It Down Act, a narrower deepfake measure that did become law in 2025, illustrates how a more sweeping likeness right has been harder to move through Congress.