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Tennessee's preexisting law protected name, image, and likeness, but it did not specifically address new, personalized generative AI cloning models and services that enable human impersonation and allow users to make unauthorized fake works in the image and voice of others.

– Tennessee becomes first US state with law protecting musicians from AI, The Economic Times

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State Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-27) and House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-44) presented the ELVIS Act to unanimous General Assembly passage with a 93-0 vote in the House and 30-0 in the Senate. Throughout the legislation's process, country guitarist Lindsay Ell, vocalist Natalie Grant, Evanescence co-founder David Hodges, Contemporary Christian artist Matt Maher, singer Chrissy Metz, songwriter Jamie Moore, RIAA SVP of Public Policy Jessie Richard, and Christian artist Michael W. Smith helped lobby for support, speaking to the potential harms of unchecked AI deep fakes and voice clones.

– ELVIS Act Signed Into Law, First AI Legislation in the U.S., Digital Music News

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Gov. Bill Lee signed the bill into law alongside musicians and other state representatives on the stage of the Lower Broadway honky-tonk Robert's Western World.

The ELVIS Act, short for the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act - HB 2091, advocates on behalf of the state's music creators by enacting voice protections. The bill arrives in the midst of AI advances where deepfakes and unauthorized uses of artists' voices and likenesses.

– ELVIS Act: Gov. Lee signs law, protects Tennessee residents from AI, Gannett

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Tennessee governor Bill Lee signed the ELVIS Act into law Thursday (Mar. 21), legislation designed to further protect the state's artists from artificial intelligence deep fakes. The bill, more formally named the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act of 2024, replaces the state's old right of publicity law, which only included explicit protections for one's "name, photograph, or likeness," expanding protections to include voice- and AI-specific concerns for the first time.

– Tennessee Adopts ELVIS Act, Protecting Artists' Voices From AI Fakes, Billboard

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"We employ more people in Tennessee in the music industry than any other state," Lee told reporters shortly after signing the bill into law. "Artists have intellectual property. They have gifts. They have a uniqueness that is theirs and theirs alone, certainly not artificial intelligence."

The Volunteer State is just one of three states where name, photographs and likeness are considered a property right rather than a right of publicity. According to the newly signed statute — dubbed the Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security Act or "ELVIS Act" — vocal likeness will now be added to that list.

– Tennessee just became the first state to protect musicians and other artists against AI, El País

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The law includes an exemption for news, public affairs, or sports broadcasts or accounts, to the extent that it is protected by the First Amendment. There also is a fair use exemption for the purposes of comment, criticism, scholarship, satire or parody.

Tennessee is the first state to pass a law designed to curb the use of AI deepfakes.

– Tennessee Governor Signs ELVIS Act To Bolster AI Protections For Artists' Voice And Likeness, Deadline

Ostensibly this right is already protected in many states, even against AI cloning and imitation, but now this law addresses the problem explicitly, at least in Tennessee.

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