The California Senate on Tuesday approved a bill to protect performers from unauthorized AI replicas, and it’s expected to reach the governor’s desk soon.
The actors’ union SAG-AFTRA has made the bill one of its top legislative priorities this year. AB 2602 would require explicit consent for the use of “digital replicas” of actors.
The bill mirrors language from the SAG-AFTRA contract that ended a four-month strike against film and television studios last year, and also expands the protections to other types of performance, such as video games, audiobooks and commercials, to cover non-union activities.
“We want to make sure that those who are not currently included in our contracts are protected,” said SAG-AFTRA general counsel Jeffrey Bennett. “We don’t want to see the next generation of performers lose all of their voice and image rights because they don’t have the leverage or ability to make sure that conditions are fair.”
The Motion Picture Association, which lobbies on behalf of the major studios, initially opposed the bill, arguing it would interfere with common post-production techniques. Lawmakers changed some of the language to address those concerns, and the association ultimately took a neutral stance.
The Assembly approved the bill in May by a vote of 62-0. It passed the Senate 36-1. Because it was amended in the Senate, it must go back to the Assembly for its assent before being sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
SAG-AFTRA Executive Director Duncan Crabtree Ireland called the bill a “major step forward.”
“In the age of digital reproduction, voice and likeness rights must have strong guardrails around licensing to protect them from abuse. This bill provides those guardrails,” he said.
The bill is one of several being considered by Congress to address potential threats from artificial intelligence.
The union proposed the bill out of concern that many performance contracts contain sweeping language granting the right to use an actor’s likeness “worldwide” and “in all media now known or hereafter devised.”
These contracts that actors might sign for a day’s commercial shoot could be interpreted by clever lawyers as granting the right to use AI to create other performances. In a nightmare scenario, actors might end up competing against likenesses of themselves for work.
The bill states that AI replica rights must be expressly negotiated and the contract must include a “reasonably specific” description of the end use — language that also appears in SAG-AFTRA’s contracts with studios.
A contract without such language would be unenforceable.
“We wanted to make sure they understood that these rights are not automatically transferred,” Bennett said. “You have to explicitly want these rights. You have to say that you want the rights and talk about the uses you’re going to make of them.”
SAG-AFTRA is currently on strike against major video game companies after negotiations over AI clauses stalled.
SAG-AFTRA is also pushing for federal “No Counterfeiting” legislation that would make it illegal to create digital replicas of performers or members of the public without their consent.
The MPA warns that such laws, if written too broadly, could violate the First Amendment by banning the use of historical figures in documentary dramas. After the Anti-Counterfeiting Act was amended to address this issue, the MPA voiced its support.
SAG-AFTRA is also lobbying for AB 1836, a bill that would protect digital replicas of deceased actors. The MPA has also taken a neutral stance on the bill.
