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It's Now Officially Illegal to Use AI to Impersonate a Human Actor in Hollywood

California passed new laws that protect actors from being replicated by an AI without their explicit permission.

While these largely overlap with the AI safeguards that SAG-AFTRA passed last year, the new laws not only bolster those existing protections but extend them to everyone in California — not just to people working in front of a camera in Hollywood, as IndieWire notes. "It is a momentous day for SAG-AFTRA members and everyone else, because the AI protections we fought so hard for last year are now expanded upon by California law thanks to the Legislature and Governor Gavin Newsom," Fran Drescher, president of the labor union, said at its headquarters in LA. SB 1047, which was passed by state lawmakers last month but awaits Newsom's approval, would throw a spanner into the works by potentially holding tech companies responsible for the outputs of their AI models.

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