Your Face, Your Voice, Your Brand — Who Actually Owns Them?
AI can clone your voice in seconds, put your face in an ad you never agreed to, and generate a fake version of you that feels completely real. Here’s what the law says about that — and why it matters more than ever for artists, entrepreneurs, and everyday New Yorkers.
Imagine opening Instagram one morning to find an ad running under your name — a product you’ve never heard of, a quote you never said, your face front and center. Or a musician discovers a deepfake version of their voice on a streaming platform, singing songs they had nothing to do with. Or a small business owner’s photo is used in a competitor’s marketing campaign without a word of permission.
These scenarios are no longer hypothetical. They happen every week. And the legal framework designed to protect you — the right of publicity — is scrambling to keep up with technology that moves much faster than legislation.
At Pierce & Kwok, we work with artists, entrepreneurs, musicians, and creative professionals across New York and beyond. These are exactly the kinds of people most exposed to this risk, and most in need of a clear understanding of where the law stands today.
What Is the Right of Publicity?
The right of publicity AI is your legal right to control the commercial use of your own identity — your name, face, voice, signature, photograph, and other attributes that are distinctively yours. Think of it as the intersection of privacy law and property law: it’s the legal recognition that your identity has value, and that others cannot simply take that value for their own commercial benefit without your permission. At a New York City law firm like Pierce & Kwok, we regularly advise clients on how to protect and enforce these rights in an increasingly digital world.
Unlike copyright (which protects creative works) or trademark (which protects brands), the right of publicity is specifically about you — the person. It protects Tom Hanks from having his face on a product he didn’t endorse. It protects a local musician from having their voice used in an ad campaign. And it protects an ordinary person from being used as a prop in someone else’s marketing.
Here’s the complication: the United States does not have a single federal right of publicity law. Instead, protection is governed by a state-by-state patchwork of statutes and court decisions. Where you live — and where the defendant operates — can determine whether you have a claim at all, what damages you can recover, and how long your rights last. For our clients in New York, and those who work across state lines, this matters enormously.
The New York Rule: Narrower Than You Might Expect
New York’s right of publicity is governed by Civil Rights Law §§ 50 and 51, which prohibit the unauthorized use of a living person’s name, portrait, picture, voice, or likeness for advertising or trade purposes. The good news: the law covers both celebrities and ordinary individuals. The less obvious news: it is more limited than many people assume, which is why consulting a music lawyer NYC artists rely on can be especially important when navigating these claims.
New York’s law is rooted in privacy protection — the idea that you have a right not to be used as a commercial tool without your consent — rather than in a broader property-rights framework. That means it focuses on the wrongfulness of the unauthorized use more than on how much money was made from it. There is no statutory minimum recovery and no automatic fee-shifting to help a winning plaintiff recoup attorney’s fees.
However, New York has meaningfully expanded its framework in recent years. The state now recognizes a 40-year postmortem right of publicity for certain deceased personalities, meaning an artist’s estate can still bring claims decades after their death. And New York has begun addressing digital replicas specifically — a direct response to the rise of AI-generated fakes and deepfakes — though this area of law is still actively developing.
For a New York artist, entrepreneur, or public figure, the practical takeaways are: (1) you do have protection, (2) you need to be strategic about how you assert it, and (3) remedies may require careful legal framing to maximize recovery.
How California Compares — And Why It Matters for New Yorkers
California’s right of publicity is significantly broader. Under California Civil Code § 3344 and a parallel common-law claim, California protects a person’s name, voice, signature, photograph, and likeness against knowing unauthorized commercial use. Critically, California’s statute provides for statutory minimum damages, the defendant’s profits, and punitive damages in appropriate cases.
California also recognizes a 70-year postmortem right of publicity for deceased personalities, treating it explicitly as a transferable property interest — more like owning a copyright than asserting a privacy right.
Why does California law matter if you’re based in New York? Several reasons. First, many entertainment contracts are governed by California law or litigated there. Second, if someone in California uses your likeness without permission, California courts may hear the case and apply California’s more plaintiff-friendly standards. Third, understanding the full spectrum of protection helps you structure contracts and licensing agreements that travel well across jurisdictions.
Our firm regularly advises clients on both sides of this equation — including entertainment and IP matters with a California dimension. The differences between these states are not academic; they can determine whether a case is worth bringing and what the likely recovery looks like.
The Federal Option: Lanham Act False Endorsement
Even without a federal right of publicity statute, high-profile individuals — and sometimes less-famous ones — have a powerful federal tool available: a false endorsement claim under Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act.
The theory works like this: if a company uses your name, face, or voice in a way that leads consumers to falsely believe you endorse or are affiliated with their product, that is a federal trademark violation. The Lanham Act provides nationwide reach, potential attorney’s fees, and enhanced damages in exceptional cases.
The trade-off is a higher burden of proof. To win a Lanham Act claim, you generally need to demonstrate that consumers are actually likely to be confused about your endorsement — often through consumer surveys or marketplace evidence. That can make these cases more expensive to litigate and harder to win without a recognizable public profile.
For high-profile clients — musicians, actors, athletes, influencers with established personal brands — federal false endorsement claims are often pleaded alongside state publicity claims. The combination creates maximum leverage and the broadest possible path to recovery.
The AI Problem: Deepfakes, Digital Replicas, and a Law That Can’t Keep Up
Everything described above was written for a world where misappropriating someone’s identity required at least some effort — a photograph, a recording, an actor performing an impression. That world is gone. Today, a bad actor can clone a person’s voice from a few minutes of publicly available audio. They can drop anyone’s face into any video. They can generate an entirely synthetic version of a real person saying or doing anything.
This is where the existing legal patchwork is most strained. Most state publicity statutes were written decades before generative AI existed. Courts are applying them to situations their drafters never imagined, with mixed results.
At the federal level, Congress has been working on legislation specifically aimed at this problem. The NO FAKES Act — short for Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe — was reintroduced in both the Senate and House in April 2025 and has attracted broad bipartisan support, along with backing from SAG-AFTRA, major music labels, and technology companies including Google and Amazon.
If passed, the NO FAKES Act would establish a federal right specifically covering digital replicas: computer-generated, highly realistic representations of a person’s voice or visual likeness that the person did not authorize. It would cover both living individuals and, for a period of time, deceased ones.
As of this writing, the bill has not yet been enacted. Critics — including civil liberties organizations — have raised First Amendment concerns about how broadly the bill’s prohibitions could reach. Legal scholars have questioned whether the preemption provisions are workable alongside existing state laws. The legislation continues to evolve.
For our clients, the practical message is this: the law in this area is in active development, and the window between this happened to me and there’s a clear legal remedy is not always a comfortable one. Acting early — and building contractual protections before problems arise — is always preferable to trying to remedy them afterward.
What This Means for You Practically
Whether you’re a working musician, a visual artist, a startup founder with a public-facing personal brand, or simply someone whose image has commercial value, here is how to think about protecting yourself:
• Understand your jurisdiction. New York’s protections are real but bounded. If your work regularly crosses state lines or involves California-based companies or platforms, you may have options under California law worth exploring.
• Think about your digital footprint. Every public recording of your voice, every photo or video of your face, is potential training data for AI systems. This doesn’t mean hiding — but it does mean being intentional about what you license and on what terms.
• Put it in writing. Whether you’re signing with a label, working with a brand partner, or licensing your image for a campaign, the contract should explicitly address AI. Does the counterparty have the right to use your likeness to train models? To generate synthetic versions of you? If the contract doesn’t say, the answer may not go your way.
• Know what “commercial use” means. Publicity claims generally require that the unauthorized use was for a commercial purpose — advertising, trade, revenue generation. Uses for news, commentary, satire, or artistic expression often fall outside the statute’s reach. If someone is misusing your identity, the nature of the use matters as much as the fact of it.
• Don’t wait to take action. Statutes of limitations apply to publicity claims, and platforms can be faster to respond when you move quickly. If something is already out there misusing your identity, document it immediately and get legal advice before it spreads further.
The Bottom Line
Your name, your face, your voice — these are not just personal attributes. For many of our clients, they are commercial assets that took years to build. The law recognizes this, even if imperfectly and inconsistently.
Right of publicity law is complicated precisely because it sits at the intersection of so many competing interests: individual dignity, free speech, commercial value, and now the rapid expansion of AI technology. Navigating that intersection requires knowing where you stand, knowing where the law is heading, and — most importantly — taking steps now to protect yourself before someone else decides that your identity is theirs to use.
If you have questions about protecting your name, likeness, or brand — or if you believe someone is already using your identity without permission — Pierce & Kwok is here to help.
Protect What’s Yours
Pierce & Kwok LLP represents artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, and creative professionals across New York and nationally. Our practice spans entertainment law, intellectual property, and litigation — including the fast-moving intersection of AI and identity.