Senator Marsha Blackburn
In the decades ahead, artificial intelligence has the potential to transform Americans’ lives for the better. From advanced manufacturing and health care to agriculture and finance, this emerging technology is improving efficiency, increasing productivity, and aiding innovation.
As AI develops and relies on more and more data, however, it is imperative that Congress provide guardrails to protect Americans’ intellectual property.
These protections are especially important for one of Tennessee’s most cherished institutions: our creative community, including the thousands of recording artists, songwriters, and musicians who call our state home.
For the music industry, AI provides both opportunities and challenges.
On the one hand, AI can open the door to new creative avenues for musicians. For example, after losing the ability to sing following a near-fatal stroke, country music icon Randy Travis last year released his first new track in a decade using an AI replication of his voice.
This same technology, however, can threaten the livelihood of artists when bad actors use AI to create new songs using their voices without their consent.
This issue garnered national attention in 2023 when the song “Heart on My Sleeve” went viral on streaming services like Spotify and YouTube, featuring vocal performances from pop stars Drake and The Weeknd. Neither artist, however, was involved in the production of the AI-generated song, which racked up hundreds of thousands of streams.
While creating new songs, individuals have also used AI to create fake cover songs without the permission of either the original recording artist or the artist whose voice is replicated. Last year, AI-generated songs that featured Miley Cyrus performing Beyonce’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages” tallied more than one million views. In March, Celine Dion warned her fans that a viral, AI-generated cover of the gospel song “Heal Me Lord” that used her voice was fake and created without her permission.
These digital replicas not only violate artists’ right to their voice and likeness, but they also deprive them of the compensation they deserve.
According to one recent study, AI could cut artists’ incomes by a quarter within the next four years, translating to millions of dollars in lost compensation. In one case alone, a man in North Carolina stole $10 million in royalties from artists and songwriters using AI-generated songs between 2017 and 2024.
Left unchecked, this threat would be catastrophic for the U.S. music industry, which does so much to promote American culture while supporting more than 2.5 million jobs.
To protect our creative community, I recently joined Senators Coons, Tillis, and Klobuchar in reintroducing the bipartisan NO FAKES Act, which would protect all Americans from having their voice used in AI-generated content without their consent. Specifically, this legislation would hold individuals and companies legally liable if they distribute or host an unauthorized digital replica of an individual’s voice or visual likeness.
This legislation would protect artists while safeguarding creative uses for AI, which is why it has received endorsements from a wide range of stakeholders, including record labels, streaming platforms, AI companies, and musical artists.
Just last week, Tennessee’s Martina McBride, a multi-platinum country music singer-songwriter, called on Congress to pass the NO FAKES Act during a hearing for the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law.
“The NO FAKES Act would give each of us the ability to say when and how AI deepfakes of our voices and likenesses can be used,” McBride told the committee, which I chair. “It gives every person the power to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ about how their most personal human attributes are used.”
McBride is right—and it’s why every member of Congress should support this vital legislation.