In March 2024, Tennessee did something pretty significant that didn’t get nearly as much attention outside of the music industry as I think it deserved.
Tennessee became the first state in the nation to pass legislation specifically addressing the impact of artificial intelligence on the music industry.
Governor Bill Lee signed the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act, better known as the ELVIS Act, on March 21, 2024. The law updated Tennessee’s existing protections for a person’s name, image, and likeness to specifically include their voice.
And that one word—voice—became increasingly important as AI technology continued to advance.
Why Does Your Voice Need Protection?
Before AI could convincingly clone someone’s voice, protecting a person’s name, image, and likeness covered a lot of the ways someone could commercially exploit another person’s identity.
Generative AI changed the game.
Today’s AI tools can analyze someone’s voice and generate new speech that sounds remarkably similar to the original person. That creates some fascinating possibilities—but it also creates some serious problems.
Imagine a songwriter discovering that an AI-generated song is using a synthetic version of their voice without permission.
Or a performer finding out that someone has created an advertisement using an AI-generated version of their voice.
Or a fan hearing a “new song” from their favorite artist that sounds completely authentic, only to discover that the artist never recorded it.
The technology doesn’t have to be used maliciously to create a problem. The fundamental question is who gets to control your identity when technology can reproduce it?
That’s the problem Tennessee lawmakers were trying to address.
Why Tennessee?
For Tennessee, this isn’t just about protecting celebrities.
Music is a massive part of the state’s economy and culture.
According to the state, Tennessee’s music industry supports more than 61,000 jobs, contributes approximately $5.8 billion to the state’s GDP, and is connected to more than 4,500 music venues.
From Memphis to Nashville, Bristol to Jackson, music is part of Tennessee’s identity.
Governor Lee summed it up during the signing by pointing to Tennessee’s artistic heritage and the need to protect artists and songwriters as artificial intelligence changes the technology landscape.
That makes the ELVIS Act particularly interesting.
Tennessee wasn’t waiting for AI to completely reshape the industry before deciding how the law should respond.
The state was trying to get ahead of it.
This Isn’t About Being Anti-AI
And that’s an important distinction.
AI isn’t going away.
I’m certainly not anti-AI. In fact, I spend a considerable amount of time working with AI and teaching people how to use these tools. AI can help small businesses create better content, help educators develop lessons, help entrepreneurs work more efficiently, and give people access to capabilities that previously required expensive software or specialized expertise.
But there’s a difference between using AI as a tool and using AI to impersonate someone without their permission.
That’s where the conversation gets complicated.
Technology tends to move much faster than legislation.
By the time lawmakers fully understand what a new technology can do, the technology has often already changed again.
The ELVIS Act is an example of lawmakers recognizing that the rules surrounding identity needed to evolve along with the technology.
The Bigger AI Question
The ELVIS Act is specifically focused on Tennessee’s right-of-publicity protections and the unauthorized use of someone’s voice.
But I think it points toward a much bigger question we’re going to continue dealing with:
What does it mean to own your identity in the age of artificial intelligence?
Your face can be digitally reproduced.
Your voice can be cloned.
Your writing style can be mimicked.
Your photographs can be altered.
And increasingly, AI can generate content that looks, sounds, and feels like something created by a real person.
That creates incredible opportunities.
It also creates incredible responsibility.
The challenge isn’t figuring out whether we should use AI. We are going to use it.
The challenge is figuring out how we use it responsibly.
Tennessee Got There First
When Governor Lee signed the ELVIS Act in 2024, Tennessee became the first state in the country to specifically address AI-generated voice cloning through this type of legislation.
That’s worth remembering.
Tennessee has a long history of being associated with music innovation. From the recording studios of Nashville to the blues of Memphis, music has helped define the state for generations.
Now Tennessee has found itself at another interesting intersection of technology and creativity.
This time, the technology isn’t a new recording device or a new instrument.
It’s artificial intelligence.
And the ELVIS Act was Tennessee’s early attempt to make sure that as the technology evolves, the people behind the voices don’t get left behind.
Because ultimately, AI may be able to replicate a voice.
But the question of who owns that voice is still very human.