So you can’t use AI to stick in, say, Marlon Brando. You can use someone who’s deceased (or presumably still alive) with their prior permission. Thoughts? A good idea? A desperately-needed bill?
Doomed to fail. The only way this can possibly be enforced will be to end up banning all social media in the state. I don’t know if you watch TikTok or not, but there have been several AI videos recently posted using the images and voice of the likes of Mr. Rogers, Bob Ross, Tupac Shakur, Betty White, Stephen Hawking, Notorious BIG, Queen Elizabeth II, Steve Irwin, and several others. So far I have only run across deceased celebrities, but from what I gather base on the provided link, those videos will now all be illegal. There’s no way California will be able to prosecute everyone making those videos, so unless they end up with a situation like the UK did with Imgur, the law will be practically (in the literal sense 
) unenforceable.
ETA: And that’s because it’s TikTok, which ironically seems to be a lot less political, toxic, and enshitified than the US based social media*. I can only imagine that things are even worse on US based platforms.
*. I don’t know when it happened, but the Chinese are passing the US in providing products that are superior in quality, not just cheaper.
A lawyer named Tilly Norwood has announced that her client (who has chosen to keep her name secret) is suing the state of California about this law.
Huh, this is basically the plot of the 2013 movie The Congress, where Robin Wright (the actress from Princess Bride) sells the rights to her digital likeness. A bit before its time, I suppose.
Well, at least it might be enforceable in Hollywood. Even a bunch of random online videos pop up, that’s pretty different from a studio using an existing actor’s likeness without their permission (and without paying them).
I agree with that. But at least based on my reading of the new laws from the link in the OP, the 30 second short I watched on TikTok earlier today, of Mr. Rogers inviting Notorious BIG to be his neighbor, is now illegal in the state of California. If that’s truly the standard that they’re going after, that isn’t going to work. Now if we’re talking about not allowing Disney to hire the AI known as Tilly Norwood to be the next Captain Marvel, that’s a whole different ball game. I would be in favor of that. But the law in question doesn’t seem to be that limited in scope.
It is already not permitted without permission from the estate. From a lawyer site
"When a beloved actor passes away, their image and likeness can still hold significant value. But, who controls these rights after they’re gone? Here’s a quick breakdown:
1. Right of Publicity – In many states, an actor’s name, image, and likeness are protected even after death. These rights may transfer to heirs or an estate.
2. Estate or Trust – The rights to a deceased actor’s image are typically managed by their estate or a trust established before their passing. The estate may control licensing deals, endorsements, and the commercial use of their likeness.
3. State Laws – The handling of publicity rights varies by state. Some states protect these rights for decades after death, while others may not offer as much protection.
4. Unauthorized Use – Using an actor’s image without permission can lead to legal action from the estate. Celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley have had their images fiercely protected after death.
So the estate of Mr. Rogers could sue the people who put this video up. I don’t know if there is law specifically pertaining to images generated by AI, but forbidding it is not all that different from what is there now.
One of the two laws makes this not just actionable by the estate but also illegal. Sounds good to me. The other seems to discourage actors and studios from being allowed to contract for a likeness in place of the real actor. It just says it is against public policy, not that it is illegal. But I’d have to read more.
Limitations are where loopholes are found.
And to a lesser extent, the plot of the Black Mirror episode “Hotel Reverie.”
As I said here:
There’s a whole lot of gray area here, and I don’t know where the line is drawn. Obviously, it’s permitted to use one living flesh-and-blood actor to replace a different actor, right? I mean, that’s what acting is. And obviously, it’s permitted to use makeup to make an actor look more like their character is supposed to look: That’s also a staple of Hollywood. Is it permitted to use digital makeup? That’s how, for instance, Davey Jones, from the Pirates of the Caribbean, worked, or 90-year-old Peggy Carter in the Captain America movies. I imagine that’s still allowed. So is it possible to take one living flesh-and-blood actor, and to use digital makeup to make them look more like their character? What if the iconic look of their character originated with a different actor? What if it’s a biopic, and their character is an actor?
And then, if that’s allowed, now we decrease the involvement of the human flesh-and-blood actor. Nowadays, it’s common for a lot of action scenes, especially ones from a distance, to use computer-generated characters, instead of stunt doubles. So what if someone’s using digital makeup to look like a different actor, but they’re not actually in an action scene, and it’s just the computer-generated image (that looks like the previous actor) that’s moving through the scene? At what point was the line crossed?
I don’t know exactly where, but reading your post made me think of the use of AI and CGI in the Star Wars prequels, especially for Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin. I’m personally OK with that usage, but obviously I don’t speak for anyone other than myself, and even then I don’t know how much further away from that the line should be.
I’m not aware of AI used in the SW prequels or sequels, except possibly procedurally-generated landscapes/textures, if you count those as AI. But JEJ did explicitly allow future use of his voice via AI.
As typical, politicians that don’t actually understand the nuances of something legislate with a sledgehammer when a scapel is needed.
Yeah, there was no workable AI when those movies came out, it’s been nearly ten years since. They did use a form of AI to recreate Mark Hamill’s voice in the recent TV shows. Also they used the deepfake face replacement technology, which isn’t really AI but a lot of people think that’s what AI is.
True Generative AI is a wholesale creation out of nothing, not just a VFX technique where they composite elements together.
There were at the time of some of the movies at least AI plugins for CGI apps to do things like crowd simulations: you define a set of apperances and behaviors and the program comes up with a large number of tiny characters looking/behaving that way. But I don’t know how much they were used. The Phantom Menace used QGI.
Can’t get an actor to sign over their rights?
“You know that we can’t get “Actor A” to sign on to this project, so why don’t we take a bit of “actor B”, a smidgen of “actor C”, and I think we can cobble together a couple of other actors’ voices to, quite coincidentally, sound about right. Nothing of the original actor is used, borrowed or stolen!”
A lot of people think that things that aren’t LLMs aren’t AI, but there isn’t actually any strict definition that includes those but doesn’t include older techniques. All “AI” means is “sufficiently advanced computer code”, and how advanced is “sufficiently” depends on the context. The code that re-created something resembling Peter Cushing’s face can fairly be called “AI”
This law sounds good to me.
As with every other form of stealing, only a small portion can be prosecuted. In this vale of tears, that’s just the way it is.
If anything, it will be easier to enforce than, say, burglary, because so much of the crime is seen in public.
If Ving Rhames signs over his voice, he is going to get a bit more than what you might expect because a large percentage of people believe it is James Earl Jones doing all those voiceover adverts for Arby’s, and not him.
Crispin Glover sued the producers of Back to the Future II for using makeup to make Jeffrey Weissman look like Glover when he played George McFly in that movie, a part played by Glover in the first movie. Wikipedia says the suit was settled out of court with Glover awarded $760,000, and the Screen Actors Guild collective bargaining agreement was amended to state that producers and actors are not allowed reproduce the likeness of other actors.