Any advertisements in New York that feature artificial intelligence-generated people in place of actors will now be violating state law if they don’t clearly label that they have used a “synthetic performer.”
The law, signed in December by Gov. Kathy Hochul, went into effect Tuesday. Her office is calling it a “first-in-the-nation law” that will boost transparency at a time when it says AI generated performers are popping up across all forms of media, including on social platforms and in digital advertising.
Synthetic performers are defined under state law as “digitally-created media that appear as a real person.” The law applies to ads in any medium.
“In New York, we are setting the rules of the road instead of letting AI run the show,” Hochul, a Democrat, said in a statement. The “simple, honest disclosure” required by the law “protects consumers, respects our creative workforce and keeps New York at the forefront of responsible innovation,” she said.
Ads that don’t “conspicuously disclose” that they have used a synthetic performer will be subject to a penalty of $1,000 for a first violation and $5,000 for any further violations.
There are specific carve outs listed in the law to exempt ads for movies, television shows, streaming content, video games and other works that feature synthetic performers in the entire work. It also doesn’t apply to audio advertisements or ads where AI is solely used for language translation.


Ok, but what about other kinds of a.i. generated performers, like animated ones? I reckon anything a.i. generated should be labelled as such.
I think the biggest concern with this bill is not knowing whether it’s real people or not. Cartoon characters are not usually mistaken for real people.
I get that. It just seems arbitrarily limited to me. And voice actors are real people too.
I suppose that depends on the goal behind the labeling. If the main goal is to call out when AI-generated content was used in lieu of paying actors and animation artists, then yes, they should also be forced to disclose when voice-over and non-realistic animated characters were AI generated.
If, however, the goal is to simply inform consumers that the person they’re looking at on the screen is not a real human, then I don’t think those things are a big concern.
It’s not really clear from the story what the intended goal is.