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Tennessee's New ELVIS Act Seeks to Protect Artists' Voices from AI Misuse
Practical Law Legal Update w-042-7524 (Approx. 5 pages)
Tennessee's New ELVIS Act Seeks to Protect Artists' Voices from AI Misuse
by Practical Law Intellectual Property & Technology
| Published on 21 Mar 2024 • New York, USA (National/Federal) |
The Governor of Tennessee has signed into law the Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security (ELVIS) Act of 2024, which extends protections to an individual's voice and is intended to provide additional safeguards against AI misuse.
On March 21, 2024, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed the Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security (ELVIS) Act into law, updating and replacing the state's Personal Rights Protection Act of 1984 (2023 TN H.B. 2091/S.B. 2096). The new law, intended to provide additional protections for Tennessee's songwriters, performers, and music industry professionals, adds:
- An individual's voice as a protected property right of every individual in any medium.
- Protections against AI misuse.
The ELVIS Act:
- Provides that an individual's property rights, in the use of that person's name, photograph, likeness, and voice, are exclusive to:
- the individual, subject to the assignment or licensing of such rights, during the individual's lifetime; and
- the individual's executors, heirs, assigns, or devisees for 10 years after the individual's death.
- Requires, after the individual's death, that any executor, assignee, heir, or devisee commercially exploit the property right to maintain exclusive rights, with termination of exclusive rights after non-use of an individual's name, photograph, likeness, or voice for commercial purposes for a period of two years following the initial 10-year period after the individual's death.
- Clarifies that the use of an individual's photograph, voice, or likeness for commercial exploitation includes the commercial availability of a sound recording or audiovisual work in which the individual's name, photograph, likeness, or voice is readily identifiable.
- Provides for liability in a civil action when a person:
- knowingly uses or infringes upon the use of an individual's name, photograph, likeness, or voice for advertising or for fundraising or solicitation purposes without consent;
- publishes, performs, distributes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to the public an individual's voice or likeness with knowledge that the use was unauthorized; and
- distributes, transmits, or otherwise makes available an algorithm, software, tool, or other technology, service, or device with the primary purpose of producing a particular, identifiable individual's photograph, voice, or likeness, with knowledge that distributing, transmitting, or otherwise making available the photograph, voice, or likeness was unauthorized.
- Authorizes the appropriate chancery and circuit court to grant injunctions on reasonable terms to prevent or restrain the unauthorized use of an individual's name, photograph, likeness, or voice.
- Allows either the individual or a person who has entered into a contract for use of the individual's exclusive personal services as a recording artist, or an exclusive license to distribute sound recordings that capture the individual's audio performances, to bring an enforcement action.
The law provides exemptions for:
- The following uses of a name, photograph, likeness, or voice, which are deemed fair use to the extent such uses are protected by the First Amendment:
- in connection with any news, public affairs, or sports broadcast or account;
- for purposes of comment, criticism, scholarship, satire, or parody;
- a representation of the individual as the individual's self in an audiovisual work, unless the work is intended to create, and does create, the false impression that the work is an authentic recording in which the individual participated;
- fleeting or incidental; or
- in an advertisement or commercial announcement of any of the above fair uses.
- Owners or employees of any medium used for advertising who have published or disseminated any advertisement or solicitation in violation of the law, unless such owners or employees had knowledge, or reasonably should have known, of the unauthorized use of an individual's name, photograph, likeness, or voice.
The law also:
- Prohibits the use of a complainant individual's name, photograph, likeness, or voice in a commercial medium constituting a use for advertising or solicitation purposes solely because the material is commercially sponsored or contains paid advertising.
- Requires that it be a question of fact whether the use of the complainant individual's name, photograph, likeness, or voice was so directly connected with the commercial sponsorship or paid advertising as to constitute a use for advertising or solicitation purposes.
The new law takes effect July 1, 2024.