Entertainment Industry Rallies to Ban Harmful AI Deepfakes

An unexpected community in the global AI conversation, the entertainment industry is fighting back against AI that is used maliciously. 

The industry, with the support of SAG-AFTRA, Disney and the Motion Picture Association, among others, has united in support of a new bill that aims to make digital deepfakes illegal and protect the voice and visual likeness of all individuals. 

Named the No Fakes Act, the senators who have drafted the bill state that its purpose would be to make it unlawful to create an AI replica of someone without their consent. It is a world-first proposal that currently has the support of many major music labels and talent agencies, in addition to leading technology companies OpenAI and IBM who have each endorsed the plans.

Keeping people safe online

This news comes in the wake of dangerous AI-created content being shared online to create misinformation and ruin people’s characters. It is a situation that is particularly poignant in the run up to the 2024 US presidential election, particularly as deepfakes of President Joe Biden and presidential candidate Kamala Harris have been a catalyst for controversy.

AI continues to rapidly advance, with numerous key industries now having to confront the technology as an inevitability. Like other business sectors, the entertainment industry has started to use AI to enable companies to better tailor their content to suit their audiences. 

Businesses can harness natural language processing (NLP) algorithms to analyse social media trends to gauge public opinion and reaction to specific content, including films, TV shows or events.

Famously, the technology can also be leveraged in film editing and CGI generation to create special effects and virtual actors for example.

However, if used maliciously, AI can cause harm to and within the film industry. There has been recent renewed interest in both state and federal legislation, with SAG-AFTRA continuing to push for law in the wake of high-profile deepfake controversies implicating well-known public figures like Taylor Swift, for example.

Confronting malicious AI

To protect a person's digital likeness, the No Fakes Act aims to introduce a “digital replication right” that offers individuals exclusive control over the use of their voice or visual likeness in digital replicas. 

This proposed legal right would extend 10 years after the person dies, or can be inherited after death and last up to 70 years after a person’s death.

A digital replica is defined by the bill as a “computer-generated, highly realistic electronic representation that is readily identifiable as the voice of visual likeness of an individual.” This then offers the individual the “right to authorise the use of the voice or visual likeness of the individual in a digital replica.”

World leaders are now also having to consider the impact of harmful AI, with nations such as India already taking significant steps to hold businesses to account if they use deepfakes across their platforms.

Even some within the technology industry are supportive of outlawing unauthorised deepfake material, as it tarnishes the trust that AI establishes within an organisation. For instance, OpenAI has pledged support for the No Fakes Act as it aims to protect creators and artists.

“Creators and artists should be protected from improper impersonation and thoughtful legislation at the federal level can make a difference,” says Anna Makanju, Vice President of Global Affairs at OpenAI, via a statement.

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