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Bill

HB 212

VOICE & VISUAL LIKENESS RIGHTS ACT

2026 Regular Session Introduced by Tara Luján and 1 co-sponsor

New Mexico bill establishing legal protections against unauthorized commercial use of individuals' voices and visual likenesses, targeting AI-generated deepfakes and digital impersonation.

action postponed indefinitely
#crimes&penalties #miscellaneous
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WeVote Research Nonpartisan
Bill Summary · HB 212

Legislative bill overview

HB 212 proposes to establish legal protections for individuals' voice and visual likeness rights in New Mexico, likely creating a right of publicity law. The bill would prevent unauthorized commercial use of a person's voice, image, or likeness, particularly relevant to emerging concerns about AI-generated deepfakes and digital impersonation. This represents an attempt to modernize New Mexico's personality rights protections in the digital age.

Why is this important

As artificial intelligence technology makes it increasingly easy to create realistic synthetic voices and images, people face new risks of unauthorized commercial exploitation without existing legal frameworks to address it. This bill directly addresses growing concerns from public figures, performers, and ordinary citizens about protecting their identity from misuse. The outcome could set precedent for how states balance individual privacy rights against free speech and creative industries.

Potential points of contention

  • Scope ambiguity: Whether protections extend only to celebrities/public figures or to all individuals, and how this affects ordinary people's ability to use public images for criticism, satire, or news reporting
  • AI and consent: How the law defines "voice and visual likeness" in the context of AI training data—whether companies need explicit consent before using existing images/audio for machine learning
  • Commercial use definition: Determining what constitutes prohibited "commercial use" versus legitimate educational, parody, or transformative uses
  • Duration and inheritance: Whether these rights expire at death or can be inherited by estates, and for how long protections last

Compiled from official sources — confirm details with the bill’s official record.

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