AI and publicity rights - who owns your face?

Attorney William Meyer joins producer/host Coralie Chun Matayoshi to discuss how Hawaii laws protect the commercial use of your voice, likeness and other attributes even post-mortem, how AI issues were resolved in the actors’ and screenwriters’ strikes, how AI contributes to misinformation and deepfakes for political smearing and sexual exploitation, and why the biggest danger of AI use in the media is lack of trust.

Q.  There is so much content on the internet for AI to copy or manipulate and AI technology has become so sophisticated that it seems that anyone can do anything with your face, body, voice, and even mannerisms and movement.  So, who owns your face? 

In the absence of federal law governing the right of publicity, states have enacted a patchwork of laws to regulate the use of your likeness, including your face, body, and voice.  Hawaii passed a right of publicity law in 2009 that allows all persons, living or deceased, the right of publicity, which is a property right in the commercial use of one’s name, voice, signature, likeness, and other commercially valuable attributes.  Clearview AI settled a lawsuit filed by the ACLU for repeated violations of the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act.  The company agreed not to sell its face database of over 20 billion photos scraped from the web and sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram to most private individuals and businesses in the U.S. While they can still sell their database to...