Take Action: Stop Little Mermaid Bills from Stealing Artists’ Voices!

Lawmakers

Big Content monopolies are pushing new AI regulations that they say will protect us from deepfakes. In reality, bills like NO FAKES and No AI FRAUD will steal artists' agency and their creative voice—like Ursula in the Little Mermaid.

These bills set out to create a new intellectual property right. But this so-called right doesn’t protect artists—in fact, quite the opposite. If these bills pass, media & content companies will issue contracts that could force anyone to sign away their appearance and voice, with no way to get it back or control how it is used for a decade or longer. Trade associations and content monopolies are pushing these bills because they crave total control over artists and their creative work.

Signing these rights away would mean that not only artists, but any vulnerable low-income person could lose any control of what happens on the Internet with their body, their face, their voice—or all three. They wouldn’t have a say in how the corporation that bought those rights uses AI to digitally manipulate their likenesses. Instead of protecting people from deepfakes, this would give corporations a deepfake superpower they can license out to literally anyone.

We’ve already seen how corporate control of artists’ rights has worked out for artists like Prince or Taylor Swift. Prince had to change his name and compared his contracts to slavery, and a man who’s been terrible to Taylor Swift owns her songs and, in her “worst case scenario,” won’t let her buy them back. Now imagine a rising star whose AI likeness endorses a presidential candidate they hate—but even as their endorsement is plastered across the Internet and news media, they could be forbidden by NDAs, noncompetes, brand protection agreements or other shady machinations from contradicting it.

That’s what these Little Mermaid bills are designed to do. They’ve been shaped by corporations looking for a legal way to have “perfect” AI artists that they can exploit while discarding the human being entirely. If someone signs one of these contracts, no true love’s kiss will be able to free their voice, face, or likeness from the Ursula’s-seashell-contracts of trade associations or other big content rightsholders. We have to stop bad AI bills before it’s too late and we all become Big Content’s poor unfortunate souls.

Contact your representative now to urge them to stop these Little Mermaid Bills from moving forward, and give people real protection from deepfakes!

Sponsored by

To: Lawmakers
From: [Your Name]

Dear Representative,

Having learned of Little Mermaid bills like No AI FRAUD (H.R.6943) and NO FAKES (H.R.9551), that pretend to protect everyday people from deepfakes while actually stealing away their voice, I am writing to urge you to stop them.

It’s true and urgent that we need real protections from deepfakes and non-consensual intimate content, and that artists deserve to choose who or what they endorse. But these bills do more than standardize the US’s patchwork of state rights of publicity. If passed, we’ll get problems like:

- a corporation forcing a celebrity’s AI likeness to endorse a presidential candidate they hate
- low income people who sell the rights to their faces to make rent getting harmed and impersonated
- noncompetes or other shady contractual machinations allowing a business to sue celebrities or everyday people for posting images of themselves
- a politician or celebrity suing anyone who shares images of them that they don’t like
- the subjects in a picture demanding payment for any use of it, such as in a photo contest

This isn’t the future we want or deserve, where our online speech and protections for our rights are worse, not better.

Artists have a long history of being hurt by contracts that take their rights away with little reversion or recourse. Prince had to change his name to keep making music how he wanted to make it. Taylor Swift had to re-record her early albums when the rights to those recordings were sold off to the highest bidder—a man who has been notoriously unkind to her. These bills propose to force musicians, authors, actors, influencers, and more to sign away rights that have never been on the table before—exclusive rights to their voice, face, and/or likeness. Rights that can be signed away for a decade with no recourse—or for up to 70 years after someone’s death.

It’s not hard to imagine what will be done with these rights. Artists will be forbidden from making the art they want to make, from speaking out on social or political causes, or from doing really anything that the corporations and trade associations the bills specifically name don’t like.

What’s worse, vulnerable or desperate people will be tricked into selling the rights to their voice and face for almost nothing. The bill has no provision to ensure that people get clear notice, that they are represented by counsel, or that they are fairly compensated in exchange for giving away this deeply personal aspect of themselves. Their likenesses will be used in ways they would never imagine, such as in AI-generated intimate content, in political advertising, or in hate speech—and these uses will affect not only their mental health and wellbeing, but their career prospects and their standing in their communities. I do not want to live in a country where anyone who can pay will be able to do such harm with no repercussions. A country where anyone who uses their face or voice to speak out against being misrepresented by corporate AI has to fear that NDAs, noncompetes, brand protection agreements, or other restrictive terms will cause them to be sued into oblivion by the corporation that owns their face.

Additionally, the No AI FRAUD Act would insidiously destroy first amendment protected speech that is essential to both innovation and social change. It would allow rightsholders to sue anyone who does reenactments and parody, who depicts a historical figure in a movie or sketch comedy, who makes memes of a celebrity, etc. And, it includes the right to sue platforms that host such content, too, meaning tha social media companies will have to aggressively filter any content with a human face or voice in it—or refuse to host such content at all. At minimum, the No AI FRAUD Act should include clear reversion rights and strict time limits on how long a person’s face and voice can be licensed—and it shouldn’t force social media to proactively censor us all.

The NO FAKES Act invites even more mass censorship. This time, of any content a celebrity, corporation, or other wealthy entity doesn’t like. NO FAKES lets anyone claim that any video, recording or photo of them is an AI deepfake and have it taken down quickly and permanently. We know from the takedown system we have, the DMCA, that forcing platforms to remove content without also imposing penalties for false takedowns or requiring that content be put back up is bad for online speech and human rights. At minimum, NO FAKES should learn from the shortcomings of the DMCA and include provisions that ensure it won’t be abused by bad-faith actors for censorship.

I’m asking you to raise your voice against Little Mermaid bills now: for creators of all stripes as well as for all the people who might be forced into signing their rights to their voices and faces away. Silencing everyone but giant corporations and rich people isn’t the solution to the harms of AI.