Gavin Newsom passes new laws protecting actors against AI
California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed two landmark new bills regarding the use of artificial intelligence in the entertainment business. The laws aim to protect actors and other performers from unauthorised use of their digital likenesses.
Initially introduced into state legislature at the start of the year, the bills offer new legal protections for performers. This includes both during their careers and lives, and after death, providing control around the digital replication of their image and voice.
It’s a major move that comes nearly a year after the major SAG-AFTRA strike. From July 14th to November 9th, 2023, members of the American actors’ union SAG-AFTRA took on the biggest strike in the union’s history, with concerns about AI being a major cornerstone of the issue.
For a while, AI has been viewed as a lingering threat against performers as the suggestion that digital recreations of themselves could replace them or that their image could be used without their consent opens up plenty of ethical debates.
As AI grows and develops, there is no real precedent or rule book set out as to how it should be used or where the line is to protect both working and deceased actors from their images and voice being used.
Newsom’s bills help draw that line. One law protects artists from being bound to contracts that allow the use of their digital voices or images, whether to replace their actual work or to train AI. The other specifically protects digital likenesses as part of performers’ posthumous right of publicity, which protects people’s identities from unauthorised use after their death.
People are also waiting to see whether Newsom will sign a third bill which specifically targets AI developers, requiring them to comply with certain safety and security guidelines before they train their AI models.
In the video of him signing the bills, he sits alongside Fran Drescher, the president of SAG-AFTRA. “With SAG and this bill I just signed, we’re making sure that no one turns over their name, image and likeness to unscrupulous people without representation or union advocacy,” he said.
Drescher supported the bills as she said the legislation could “speak to people all over the world that are feeling threatened by AI.”
She continued: “Even though there are smart people that come up with these inventions, I don’t think that they think it all the way through of what will happen when humans don’t have a place to make a living and continue to feed their families.”
It’s a move that many major actors have supported. Mark Ruffalo took to social media to say, “All the big tech companies and billionaire tech boys in Silicon Valley don’t want to see this happen, which should make us all start looking at why immediately.” He added, “But AI is about to explode, and in a way that we have no idea what the consequences are.”
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