New federal law locks voices and faces into 70-year copyright-like control

What it does

The NO FAKES Act creates a new federal property right protecting individuals' voices and visual likenesses from unauthorized use in AI-generated digital replicas. It gives people (and their heirs for 70 years after death) the exclusive right to authorize deepfakes, requires online platforms to remove infringing content upon notice, and imposes civil liability of $5,000–$750,000 per violation on creators and distributors of unauthorized digital replicas or tools designed to make them.

Why we flagged it

The bill's core mechanism is creating a new federal intellectual property right in voices and visual likenesses, enforceable against digital replicas. While framed as consumer protection against deepfakes, it functions as a broad property-rights grant with significant restrictions on speech, parody, and commentary—making it simultaneously a consumer-protection measure and a speech-limiting IP expansion.

What the text implies

• The 70-year post-mortem right in deceased individuals' voices and likenesses may restrict historical documentaries, biographical films, and artistic works depicting real people, even with disclaimers or fictionalization, unless they fall within narrow safe harbors.
• Online platforms face liability for user-uploaded content unless they implement costly digital-fingerprinting systems and respond to takedown notices within hours—shifting enforcement burden from rights-holders to intermediaries and potentially increasing platform moderation costs.
• The bill's definition of 'digital replica' includes materially altered performances, which may capture legitimate remixes, mashups, and transformative works that do not currently infringe copyright but would now require authorization.
• Minors' likeness rights are locked in for only 5 years or until age 18, but heirs can extend the right for 70 years post-mortem, creating asymmetric control: a child actor's voice could be controlled by estate heirs decades after the child's death.
• The safe harbor for 'bona fide news, public affairs, or sports broadcast' requires the digital replica to be 'the subject of, or materially relevant to' the broadcast—a vague standard that may exclude news commentary, satire, or critical uses of deepfakes as evidence of AI manipulation.

Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.

Who it affects

The bill protects ordinary people and performers from non-consensual deepfakes and voice cloning, a genuine public harm. However, it creates a 70-year post-mortem property right in voices and likenesses that may restrict legitimate speech, parody, commentary, and historical/biographical uses—and the safe harbors for these uses are narrow and require proof of exemption. The burden of compliance falls on platforms and creators, not rights-holders, and the statutory damages ($5,000–$750,000) are pu

Who stands to gain

• talent agencies and entertainment estates (post-mortem licensing revenue)
• sound recording artists and their heirs (exclusive licensing rights)
• digital-fingerprinting and content-identification technology vendors
• online platforms with resources to implement compliance infrastructure

Named in the bill

Register of Copyrights, online service providers, sound recording artists, digital music providers, interactive computer services, Copyright Office, district courts

Where it stands

15 cosponsors: 8 Republicans, 7 Democrats.

• May 20, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
• May 20, 2026 — Referred to Senate Committee on the Judiciary · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary”
• Jun 18, 2026 — Reported out of committee · Congress.gov: “Committee on the Judiciary. Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably”

Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.

Money around this bill

29 lobbying clients named this bill on 31 disclosure filings across 1 quarter, Jun 2026 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $14,470,636 in lobbying spend. A filing names 7 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.

More lobbying clients named this bill than 98% of bills with at least one filing.

Christopher Coons, the sponsor, reported $1,402,800 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle. $10,000 of that came from 1 PAC tied to these lobbying clients.

• American Medical Association — $5,643,000 on 2 filings
• Recording Industry Association of America — $2,206,361 on 1 filing
• Universal Music Group — $1,460,000 on 2 filings
• Software & Information Industry Association — $1,396,909 on 1 filing
• Entertainment Software Association — $1,390,000 on 1 filing

Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 23, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.