The bipartisan NO FAKES Act clears the Senate Judiciary Committee by unanimous voice vote, creating a federal intellectual property right over AI-generated digital replicas of voice and visual likeness — with platform liability, 70-year post-mortem protections, and DMCA-style takedown provisions.
On June 18, 2026, the Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act (S. 4591) was unanimously advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by voice vote, moving the bill to the full Senate for consideration. The legislation would create a new federal intellectual property right giving every individual — not just celebrities — the right to control how their voice and visual likeness are used in AI-generated digital replicas, with unauthorized use carrying civil liability for both creators and platforms that knowingly host such content.
The bill's architecture borrows from the DMCA playbook. It establishes a notice-and-takedown system allowing individuals to demand prompt removal of unauthorized digital replicas, with a counter-notice procedure to restore content removed by mistake. False counter-notifications face penalties of $25,000 per violation. The digital replication right extends beyond death for up to 70 years, transferable by heirs, and licenses for digital replicas are capped at 10 years. Explicit First Amendment carve-outs protect news reporting, documentaries, parody, criticism, and non-commercial research by libraries and educational institutions.
The bill's bipartisan sponsorship — led by Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Chris Coons (D-DE), with Sens. Klobuchar, Tillis, and Durbin as co-sponsors — and its broad coalition of supporters spanning the music industry (Universal, Warner, Sony, RIAA), entertainment (Disney, SAG-AFTRA, Motion Picture Association), and tech platforms (OpenAI, Google, Spotify, TikTok) signal unusually strong alignment. Opposition has come primarily from free speech advocates including the EFF and Public Knowledge, as well as the Entertainment Software Association, which raised concerns about frivolous lawsuits targeting video game characters.
The committee vote is an important milestone but not the finish line. The bill now heads to the full Senate, and a companion bill (H.R. 8915) awaits action in the House Judiciary Committee. Reports indicate Sen. Blackburn is also working with the White House on a potential larger AI legislative package that could bundle the NO FAKES Act with the Kids Online Safety Act. For the voice AI industry, the bill's progress signals that federal voice-and-likeness protection is no longer a question of if but when — and that companies building voice cloning technology should be designing consent, licensing, and takedown systems now rather than scrambling to retrofit them after passage.
