Lisa Callif Speaks to The Tennessean About The Legal Implications of the ELVIS Act
Lisa Callif recently spoke to The Tennessean about The Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security (ELVIS) Act, which went into effect this week after being passed by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee in March. The ELVIS Act is intended to provide protections against AI, deepfakes, and unauthorized uses of artists’ voices and likenesses.
Lisa tells The Tennessean that she believes the bill, which was introduced mid-January, was passed too quickly. She draws on the perspective of filmmakers, explaining that the ELVIS Act may affect film in addition to music unintentionally, as there is no distinction in the bill between using AI to enhance a story as opposed to using AI to deceive an audience.
“Our viewpoint has pretty much been, as long as we’re not deceiving the public and as long as it’s really clear that this was created with AI, it’s really no different than doing a reenactment or using archival materials to tell the same story,” she tells The Tennessean. “I feel like that point…is really important,” she added. “And I don’t think that’s really addressed in the statute.”
She concludes that the essence of the ELVIS Act is not a novel concept, and unauthorized use of an artist’s image, voice, and likeness has always been prohibited to some degree, even prior to the invention of AI.
“The concept of using someone’s voice—without authorization and in a deceptive way—isn’t something that’s ever really been acceptable,” she explains. “So I don’t think that that part of the law, which seems to be the biggest part of the law, really changes all that much.”