NO FAKES is still a bill, not a law
S.4591 advanced out of Senate Judiciary on 18 June 2026 and has not been enacted. What it would do, and why state law is the operative regime today.
The NO FAKES Act advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on 18 June 2026. Two months later it is still a bill. It has not passed the Senate, it has not passed the House, and it has not been signed.
That distinction keeps getting lost in coverage that describes the federal digital-replica right in the present tense, as though there were something to comply with. There is not — yet. There is quite a lot to comply with in state law, and almost none of it is what people are reading about.
What "advanced out of committee" actually means
A bill reported out of committee has cleared one step in a long sequence: floor consideration in the Senate, a vote, a path through the House, reconciliation of any differences, and signature.
Reporting out of committee puts a bill in a queue. It does not schedule a vote, it does not indicate a timeline, and — the part that matters most for planning — it does not fix the text. Provisions get added, narrowed and traded on the way to a floor vote. Any operational decision you make now against the current draft is a decision against language that may not survive.
The bill text for S.4591 is public and worth reading if this affects your business. Read it as a proposal, not a specification.
What it would do, in one paragraph
It would create a federal right in a person's voice and likeness against unauthorised digital replicas. The United States currently has no federal right of publicity at all, which is the underlying problem it addresses: rights in your own face and voice are defined by roughly fifty separate state regimes that do not agree with each other.
The details that would actually govern your work — how long the right lasts, whether it is transferable, who can be sued, what safe harbours platforms get, and how expressive uses are carved out — are exactly the provisions most likely to move before enactment. Do not build a policy around them.
For the fuller map of how the federal proposal sits alongside the state regimes, we covered voice and likeness law for creator marketing separately. This post is about status.
What is actually in force right now
| Regime | Where | In force | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| ELVIS Act (Tenn. Code §47-25-1101 et seq.) | Tennessee | 1 Jul 2024 | Adds voice to the protected personal rights; unauthorised digital replicas actionable, including against tool providers |
| AB 1836 | California | 1 Jan 2025 | Digital replicas of deceased personalities require estate consent |
| AB 2602 | California | 1 Jan 2025 | Replica clauses in performer contracts are unenforceable unless the uses are specifically described and the performer is represented |
| TAKE IT DOWN Act | US federal | 19 May 2026 (platform duties) | Not a publicity right — criminalises non-consensual intimate imagery including AI-generated, plus a platform notice-and-removal duty |
Three things in that table deserve more attention than NO FAKES currently gets.
The ELVIS Act already reaches tool providers. That is the aggressive design choice everyone expects a federal statute to make, and Tennessee made it two years ago. If you build or operate voice cloning, this is the live exposure, not a pending bill.
AB 2602 is a contracting rule, and it is operative. If you commission a performer and want replica rights, a general grant does not get you there. The intended uses have to be described specifically and the performer has to be represented. That means your talent agreement needs rewriting today, in a way NO FAKES would not add to.
TAKE IT DOWN is the federal law that actually passed. It is not a likeness right, but it is the enforceable federal instrument in this neighbourhood, and its platform duties have been live since 19 May 2026.
Why the patchwork is the real operating condition
Without a federal right, which law applies depends on where the person is, where you published, and where you are. Those three answers routinely point at different states.
Two consequences worth internalising:
There is genuine First Amendment tension over expressive uses, and it is unresolved. Commentary, parody, news and fiction sit awkwardly against a broad likeness right, which is one reason a federal bill is hard to pass rather than a sign nobody wants it.
Style imitation is not the same legal object as replication. A soundalike or a look-alike style that copies no protected work remains largely lawful in the US. This is the most misunderstood line in the whole area. "Sounds like a genre associated with an artist" and "is a clone of a specific person's voice" are different problems with different exposure, and conflating them leads teams to either over-restrict harmless work or under-restrict the dangerous kind.
Meanwhile the layers that actually constrain production are moving faster than the statute:
- Union agreements. The ratified 2026 SAG-AFTRA TV/Theatrical terms restrict synthetic performers in human roles, and we broke down what was agreed and where ad work sits.
- Platform licensing programmes. Some platforms now run their own consent and licensing layer for avatar likenesses; how TikTok's Symphony avatars handle it is the clearest worked example.
- Detection. Enrolment in likeness detection is available and imperfect. The step-by-step process is worth doing if your face is a business asset.
The direction across all three is the same: likeness is being treated as something you licence in advance rather than something you sue over afterwards. Digital replica rights turning into property is the longer version of that argument.
What to do while the bill sits
- Treat consent as a licence, not a signature. Scope, term, territory, permitted uses, and what happens if the person withdraws. A one-line release does not survive a dispute.
- Default to a licensed named voice before you clone one. Most briefs do not need a clone, and a named voice from a library removes the consent problem entirely rather than managing it. How to audition one properly and the voice-over tools are the practical route.
- If you do clone, get written consent from the speaker naming the uses. Tennessee already lets a claim reach the tool as well as the person using it, so "the platform let me" is not a position.
- Fix your talent agreements for AB 2602 now. That statute is in force and it invalidates vague replica clauses. This is real work with a real deadline that already passed.
- Do not re-paper anything for NO FAKES. The text will change. Re-paper for the laws that exist.
- Keep the rights record with the project files. Same discipline as any other licensed asset — see usage rights for the vocabulary a client's legal team will expect.
FAQ
Is NO FAKES law yet?
No. S.4591 advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on 18 June 2026 and has not been enacted. There is nothing to comply with under it today.
If it passes, will it replace the state regimes?
Unknown, and preemption is one of the most contested design questions in any federal publicity right. Do not assume state law goes away. Depending on the final text, you could end up with a federal floor plus surviving state regimes, which would mean more compliance surface rather than less.
Does the ELVIS Act matter if I am not in Tennessee?
Whether a Tennessee statute reaches a particular defendant is a jurisdictional question with fact-specific answers, which is exactly the problem a fifty-state patchwork creates. The practical approach is to design against the strictest regime you plausibly touch rather than trying to geo-avoid one. The strictest regime currently reaches tool providers, so build for that.
Is a soundalike voice legal?
Imitation that reproduces no protected work is largely lawful in the US as a copyright matter, but right-of-publicity and ELVIS-style voice rights aim squarely at that boundary and the line is fact-specific. The commercial risk lives where an ordinary listener would take the voice for a specific real person, particularly in advertising. If your creative brief needs a voice that recognisable, treat it as a casting and licensing problem, not a prompting one.