Is the NO FAKES Act law? Not yet. Where it stands, what happens next, and what it would do

• October 28, 2026: this page was rebuilt as a live tracker, with the September 30 objection, the lame-duck outlook and the committee's substitute text.

• October 7, 2026: RIAA chairman and chief executive Mitch Glazier told Billboard the bill has "a real shot" in the lame-duck session, while calling a 2027 reintroduction the more likely outcome.

• September 30, 2026: Senator Blackburn asked the Senate to pass the bill by unanimous consent. Senator Cruz objected, saying its exception for parody is unclear.

• June 24, 2026: the Judiciary Committee formally reported the bill, and it was placed on the Senate calendar.

• June 18, 2026: the committee approved the bill by voice vote. Several senators, Ted Cruz among them, raised First Amendment concerns but let it advance.

• May 20, 2026: S.4591 was introduced, the fourth version of a proposal first released as a discussion draft in October 2023.

NO FAKES Act: the Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe Act of 2026, S.4591 in the Senate and H.R. 8915 in the House, which would create a federal right in every person's voice and visual likeness.

Digital replica: in the bill's words, "a newly created, computer-generated, highly realistic electronic representation that is readily identifiable as the voice or visual likeness of an individual," in material where the person did not actually perform, or where a real performance was materially altered.

Right holder: the person whose voice or likeness it is, and anyone who later acquires the right "through a license, inheritance, or otherwise."

Unanimous consent: a Senate shortcut that passes a bill without a recorded vote, provided no senator objects. A single objection stops it.

Lame-duck session: the weeks between the November election and the start of the new Congress in January, when the outgoing Congress often clears bills it left unfinished.

The NO FAKES Act would turn a person's voice and appearance into federal property, then give that person, and their heirs after death, the tools to stop unauthorized AI copies. Most coverage has summarized it as a protection for performers. The text is broader than that: it defines an individual as "a human being, living or dead," with no requirement of fame or commercial value. Every figure in the table below comes from the substitute text the Judiciary Committee reported on June 24, 2026.

Two details matter more than the headlines suggest. The first is how it treats the past. The right applies to every individual "regardless of whether the individual dies before, on, or after the date of enactment," and for people who died before the bill becomes law it would "vest in the executors, heirs, assignees, or devisees," so the estates of people who have already died, including Dolly Parton's, would gain a federal right. Liability, by contrast, only reaches conduct after enactment, so the bill would not punish fakes posted before it was signed. The second is the subpoena power. A right holder could ask the clerk of any federal district court, rather than a judge, to issue a subpoena that forces a platform to identify an anonymous poster, using the same machinery the copyright statute provides. Civil liberties groups have long criticized the same mechanism in copyright law, and our view is that unmasking an anonymous speaker should require a judge.

Senator Cruz objected because he believes the bill leaves too much power over parody in the hands of technology platforms. "One of my concerns about how this bill is drafted right now is it will apply to websites like the Babylon Bee or The Onion, and it leaves the decision as to whether someone's use of a likeness falls within the exception," he said on the Senate floor, according to reporting on the September 30 exchange. "It creates an exception for what it calls bona fide parody, but it leaves to big tech to make the decision whether it falls in that exception or not." He cited AI-generated political content, including images posted on President Donald Trump's social media accounts and a deepfake from the Los Angeles mayoral race.

Senator Blackburn answered that the protections Cruz wanted were already in the bill. "We have worked with First Amendment legal experts in drafting the bill, and we are confident that it is First Amendment compliant," she said, adding that the sponsors had "doubled down" on the language. She pointed to the counter-notice process: anyone who believes their removed content is protected speech can file a counter-notice, and unless the complainant goes to court within 14 days, "the content can go right back up."

The disagreement is narrower than it sounds. Nobody on the Senate floor argued against a federal right in a person's voice; Cruz voted for the bill in committee and said he wants it to pass. The fight is over who decides, in the first days after a takedown notice, whether a fake is protected satire. Under the bill's design, a platform facing damages of up to $750,000 per work has every reason to remove first and let a court sort it out later, which is the same concern the Electronic Frontier Foundation raised when it opposed the bill in June. A deal on the parody wording would likely clear the way for a vote.

The bill has three realistic paths, and the calendar decides between them. The first runs through the lame-duck session that follows the November 3 midterms. If the sponsors and Senator Cruz agree on revised parody language, Senator Blackburn can ask for unanimous consent again, and the House would then need to pass the same text before Congress adjourns. The RIAA's Mitch Glazier, whose industry has lobbied hardest for the bill, put the odds plainly on Billboard's On the Record, as summarized by AI Musicpreneur: "We have a shot in the lame duck [period], a real shot."

The second path is a ride on a larger bill. Year-end spending and defense packages often carry smaller measures that could not pass alone, although no one has announced a plan to attach this one. The third path, which Glazier called the more likely outcome, is a fresh start: the bill dies on January 3, 2027, and its sponsors introduce it again in the new Congress, where it has to clear committee a second time in both chambers.

Whatever happens in Congress, the direction of federal policy is set. The White House's AI policy framework, released in March 2026, recommends that Congress create a federal rule against the unauthorized distribution or commercial use of AI replicas of a person's voice or likeness, according to a Forbes analysis. The open questions are the parody wording, the takedown mechanics and how much room states keep, not whether a federal right is coming.

If it passes in its current form, you would hold a federal property right in your voice and face from the day it takes effect, whether or not you are famous. Anyone who posted a convincing AI copy of you without your permission, or sold an app built to clone you, could be sued, and you could send a platform a takedown notice instead of hiring a lawyer first. Children would be protected by the five-year license limit and the court approval requirement, which would stop a parent from signing away a child's face in an app's terms of service.

The after-death rules are where families need to pay attention. Your heirs would hold the right for ten years. Keeping it beyond that would require two things: someone actively and lawfully using your voice or likeness in commerce, and a sworn filing with the Register of Copyrights during each renewal window. Seventy years is the ceiling for estates that do both, like the estates of famous musicians. For most families, the federal right would quietly lapse a decade after death, which is fine if nobody ever wanted to use your voice, and a problem if your grandchildren later want to stop a stranger from doing so.

That puts the weight on something no statute supplies: a named person who knows they hold the right, knows what you consented to while you were alive, and can prove what your real voice sounds like. A law can hand rights to an estate. Only a person can enforce them, and only if you have told them what you wanted. That is the job Executor Lock™ was built to do: you build your own Persona from your own memories and voice, and you name the people who step in, so the consent behind your Persona is yours and the decisions after your death are made by people you chose. It works alongside a will, and our guide to leaving permission for an AI of you in your will explains how the two fit together.

The federal bill would sit on top of the state laws already in force, not replace them, and the differences explain why both sides of the industry care so much about the details.

Our guide to the ELVIS Act and Dolly Parton's estate explains Tennessee's law in depth, and our tracker of digital replica laws by state covers the other states that have passed AI likeness laws. Outside the United States, our deepfake laws by country tracker covers 17 jurisdictions, including Denmark's proposal to treat a person's face and voice as protected from 2027.

Three things work today. The TAKE IT DOWN Act, signed on May 19, 2025, requires covered platforms to remove non-consensual intimate images, including AI forgeries, within 48 hours of a valid request, and that duty has applied since May 19, 2026. State law protects you if you live in one of the states with a publicity or digital replica statute, such as Tennessee, California, New York or Illinois. And for scam calls, the Federal Communications Commission ruled in February 2024 that AI-generated voices count as "artificial" under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which lets you sue over robocalls that use them.

The fourth protection is the one you control: a clear record of what you consented to, made while you are alive. Fakes are easier to fight when your family can show what your real voice sounds like, what you actually said, and what you never agreed to. Our guide on how to prove a voice is really you covers that in detail.

The bill's provisions are quoted from the substitute text reported by the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 24, 2026, and its history, sponsor and cosponsor count from the GovInfo bill status record. The committee vote and the preemption analysis come from Holland & Knight's June 22, 2026 alert. The September 30 exchange is quoted from reporting on Senator Cruz's objection and checked against Beyond Copying's summary of the Senate record. Mitch Glazier's remarks come from Billboard's On the Record as summarized by AI Musicpreneur, and the White House framework from the Forbes analysis syndicated on Yahoo Finance. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's position comes from its June 2026 analysis, and the TAKE IT DOWN Act from Public Law 119-12. Every fact was checked on October 28, 2026, and this page will be updated after each vote. It explains the bill in plain English and is not legal advice.