Even Elon Musk wants legislation in California to prevent the unbridled rise of artificial intelligence, and today politicians in Sacramento moved a big step closer to protecting actors from some kind of virtual afterlife.
The state Senate passed a bill on third reading Tuesday that would require studios, streamers and other employers to get specific permission from performers when creating digital replicas.
Assembly Bill 2602 has been strongly supported by SAG-AFTRA since long before it was introduced in April, and the union has been pushing on all sides of politics for a year to codify many of the provisions of the strike-ending agreement it reached with AMPTP last fall into federal and state law.
“We are thrilled that one of our top legislative priorities, Bill AB 2602, has passed in California,” SAG-AFTRA national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree Ireland told Deadline tonight. “This bill is a major step forward to protect not only SAG-AFTRA performers, but all performers,” the union leader added, testifying about the bill in Sacramento.
“In an age of digital reproduction, voice and likeness rights must have strong guardrails around licensing to protect them from abuse. This bill provides those guardrails.”
After going through the usual revisions that nearly all legislation undergoes, AB 2602 now defines a digital replica as “a highly realistic computer-generated electronic representation that is readily identifiable as the voice or appearance of an individual embodied in a recording, image, audiovisual work, or transmission in which the actual individual is not actually performing or appearing, or in which the actual individual is performing or appearing but the essential characteristics of the performance or appearance have been substantially altered.”
According to the bill, this does not include “electronic copying of a sound recording or audiovisual work authorized by the copyright owner, the use of samples of one sound recording or audiovisual work in another, remixing, mastering, or digital remastering.”
With zero opposition in the Democratic-controlled Assembly and Senate, AB 2602 will have to be sent back to the House to be replicated, so to speak, with changes made in the Senate.
AB 2602 will then head to Governor Gavin Newsom's desk to be signed into law or vetoed. While the Governor's office made no announcements about the bill tonight, it's safe to say that AB 2602's fate looks pretty bright.
The bill, currently sponsored by six lawmakers, would include the use of a digital replica of Peter Cushing, who died in the 2016 film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and if signed by Governor Newsom, would go into effect on January 1, 2025.
In parallel with other AI guardrail bills under consideration in the California Assembly, there are also several bipartisan efforts in a deeply divided Congress, with the No Fakes Act inching its way to passage in Washington, D.C. Despite the fact that the criticized “substantially related” exception remains in the No Fakes Act, SAG-AFTRA, led by Fran Drescher, has become increasingly active in Sacramento and on Capitol Hill.
Over the past year, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have issued a range of executive orders in the White House aimed at limiting the spread of generative AI.
“Artificial intelligence and companies that harness its potential will transform lives around the world. There's no doubt about that. But first they have to earn our trust,” the president said in May, shortly after Scarlett Johansson publicly sparred with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the use of her voice sounding similar to his in the ChatGPT 4.0 system.
“I am committed to doing everything in my power to promote and demand safe, secure, trustworthy and responsible innovation, and that includes the use of AI-generated audio,” the sitting president added this spring. “I ask AI companies to join me in this commitment.”
As evidenced by AB 2602, passed in California today, if they won’t promise it, just legislate it.
