Tennessee ELVIS Act — Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security Act of 2024: AI Compliance Requirements

Who Does This Apply To?

Applies to any person or business that (a) knowingly uses an individual's name, photograph, voice or likeness for advertising, merchandise, goods, services, or fundraising/solicitation purposes without the required consent (§ 47-25-1105(a)(1)); (b) publishes, performs, distributes, transmits, or otherwise makes available an individual's voice or likeness knowing the use was unauthorised (§ 47-25-1105(a)(2)); or (c) distributes, transmits, or otherwise makes available an algorithm, software, tool, other technology, service or device whose "primary purpose or function" is producing a particular, identifiable individual's photograph, voice or likeness, knowing it was unauthorised (§ 47-25-1105(a)(3)) — where the conduct occurs in or affects a Tennessee individual. "Voice" is defined at § 47-25-1102 to cover a sound readily identifiable and attributable to a particular individual "regardless of whether the sound contains the actual voice or a simulation of the voice," which is what brings AI synthesis squarely inside the Act. Section 47-25-1103(a) vests the property right in EVERY individual, so there is no celebrity, business-size or revenue threshold. Required consent comes from the individual, from a parent or legal guardian for a minor, or from the executor, administrator, heirs or devisees for a deceased individual. STANDING (§ 47-25-1106(f), added by Pub. Ch. 588 § 8): where a person holds an exclusive personal-services contract with a recording artist or an exclusive licence to distribute sound recordings capturing the individual's audio performances, an action to enforce may be brought by that person OR the individual — so record labels and exclusive distributors can sue in their own right. EXEMPTIONS are the five branches of § 47-25-1107(a), each conditioned on the use being protected by the First Amendment: (1) news, public affairs, or sports broadcast or account; (2) comment, criticism, scholarship, satire or parody; (3) a representation of the individual as the individual's self in an audiovisual work as defined under 17 U.S.C. § 101, UNLESS the work is intended to and does create the false impression that it is an authentic recording in which the individual participated; (4) fleeting or incidental use; and (5) an advertisement or commercial announcement for a work described in subsection (a). Branch (3) and its false-impression carve-back are the provision most often missed and are the direct hook for AI-generated "authentic recording" fakes. KNOWLEDGE: § 47-25-1107(c), as amended by Pub. Ch. 588 § 11, applies where the person "had knowledge or reasonably should have known of the unauthorized use" — a constructive-knowledge standard. Remedies are criminal (Class A misdemeanour, § 39-14-152) and civil (§ 47-25-1106: injunction, seizure/impoundment and destruction, actual damages plus the violator's profits, punitive damages where applicable, and § 47-25-1106(d)(2) treble damages plus attorney fees for knowing infringement of an active-service armed-forces or Tennessee National Guard member's rights).