There was a sizable Memphis contingent attending a press conference in Nashville last month, and not just because it concerned new bipartisan legislation known as the ELVIS Act. That’s not about naming another street after The King, but rather a recognition of how the distinctive, instantly recognizable voices of recording artists need new protections in the brave new world of artificial intelligence (AI). Officially speaking, it’s the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act, which Gov. Bill Lee’s office describes as “a bill updating Tennessee’s Protection of Personal Rights law to include protections for songwriters, performers, and music industry professionals’ voice[s] from the misuse of artificial intelligence.” And among the catalysts for the legislation, it turned out, was the concern one Memphian felt over the risks of such misuse.
That would be Gebre Waddell, whose company Sound Credit is focused on ensuring recognition of music industry workers’ contributions to the recording arts via a custom platform that catalogs credits, like the liner notes of your dreams. That being the sea in which Waddell swims, confronting AI’s ability to mimic artists’ work came naturally to him, but he didn’t do so as a representative of Sound Credit, or as the secretary/treasurer of the Recording Academy, or as a member of the Tennessee Entertainment Commission (other hats that Waddell wears).
Rather, it all began with some casual party banter. Last year, Waddell was attending one of many celebrations honoring hip-hop’s 50th anniversary when a common concern kept coming up in conversation. “So we were chatting on the lawn and conversations just started turning towards AI,” he recalls. “This was not long after the fake Drake/fake The Weeknd thing happened.”
That was the phenomenon where, as Billboard reported last April, “a track called ‘Heart on My Sleeve,’ allegedly created with artificial intelligence to sound like it was by Drake and The Weeknd became the hottest thing in music.” It was quickly pulled from streaming services after raising concerns over potentially widespread deep fakes of human hitmakers, but the issue lingered in the minds of music industry influencers.
“As we were chatting,” Waddell recalls, “I was like, ‘You know, we just need to add AI language into an existing state’s right of publicity law, and then that could create some momentum for a federal law.’ That was just an idea that I threw out there and people were saying, ‘That that would be great, you could probably pull some people together.’ So I came home and set up some Zooms.”
A “right of publicity law” is one that protects against unauthorized uses of a person’s name or likeness for commercial (and certain other) purposes, but there is no federal standard, only a hodgepodge of different states’ statutes. Tennessee has one of the country’s toughest right of publicity laws, but it does not feature language about AI. Waddell decided to fix that.
“I drafted a version of what the legislation could look like,” says Waddell. “Then I invited a number of people to a Zoom meeting to discuss it, and I showed them what I drafted. And it really created some momentum.” Clearly, this was permeating the zeitgeist, and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) soon drafted their own version. The momentum only increased. “Boom, the very next thing to happen was the press conference,” says Waddell.
The Recording Academy, which last year helped launch the Human Artistry Campaign to protect human-created music in the face of AI, was there in force, as were other organizations, all eager to witness the first proposed state legislation to explicitly target AI fakes. As the Recording Academy’s news page noted, “The ELVIS Act is expected to be quickly considered by the state’s legislature, and with support from the Governor could soon become the first law of its kind. And the Recording Academy hopes it will also become model legislation for other states to follow. That same day, leaders on Capitol Hill took a similar step to protecting creators’ identity with the bipartisan introduction of the No AI FRAUD Act (H.R. 6943).”
Waddell, for his part, is feeling encouraged. “I fully support it. I think that, as it’s currently written, it’s exactly what we need. And the thing I’m really proud of is that it carries a West Tennessee namesake: It ended up being called the ELVIS Act. It started with the involvement of a Memphian and ended up having a very Memphis kind of name.”