NO FAKES Act: Senate Judiciary Advances Federal Digital Replica Right (2026)
On June 18, 2026, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to report the NO FAKES Act of 2026 (S. 4591), with an amendment in the nature of a substitute. Grassley reported the substitute June 24; the bill sits on the Senate Legislative Calendar (Calendar No. 446), awaiting floor action. A House companion, H.R. 8915, remains pending in committee.
The bill would create a new federal intellectual-property right governing AI-generated “digital replicas” of an individual’s voice and visual likeness — a newly created, computer-generated, highly realistic electronic representation readily identifiable as a given individual, whether (1) in a performance never given or (2) one materially altered from what was actually performed. The right applies to private citizens and public figures alike, alongside existing state law.
NO FAKES addresses a real gap: a voice or likeness, standing alone, is not copyrightable, and federal law has no uniform counterpart to state right-of-publicity regimes. A synthetic vocal track or AI-generated likeness can therefore trade on someone’s identity without implicating copyright at all.
The right is non-assignable during life but licensable, with capped license duration and shorter terms and added protections for minors. Postmortem, it passes to an estate or designated successor for an initial term after death, renewable in periods tied to continued qualifying use, up to a 70-year outer limit.
The bill reaches beyond whoever creates the replica, establishing DMCA-style notice-and-removal procedures and safe harbors for qualifying online services. New in 2026: a formal counter-notification process letting a user challenge an erroneous removal or assert the replica was authorized or excluded.
It also protects qualifying nonprofit libraries, archives, and accredited educational institutions engaged in noncommercial activity, plus First Amendment and other exclusions. Remedies include actual damages and profits or statutory damages, injunctive relief, attorney’s fees, and, in specified circumstances, punitive damages.
On preemption, the bill preempts state-law causes of action concerning digital replicas in an expressive work, while preserving causes of action existing as of January 2, 2025 — grandfathering protections such as Tennessee’s ELVIS Act rather than displacing them.
For licenses, the contracting implications may be more immediate than the legislative timeline. Standard name-image-likeness language in talent, endorsement, and licensing agreements was not drafted with digital replicas in mind — consent to use a performer’s likeness in one context shouldn’t automatically authorize a studio, label, or brand to generate a synthetic performance from it. Anyone negotiating these agreements now should treat replica rights as a distinct grant, addressed expressly rather than assumed under generic likeness language.