What is the ELVIS Act?

What does the ELVIS Act do?

The ELVIS Act updated Tennessee's right-of-publicity law (the old Personal Rights Protection Act) to explicitly cover voice — including simulations — as a protected property right, alongside name, image and likeness. It created liability not just for using someone's cloned voice commercially, but also for distributing tools whose primary purpose is producing unauthorized voice replicas.

Why Tennessee: Nashville. The state legislated where its music industry lives, and the act passed in 2024 with industry backing — before any federal framework existed.

Why does a Tennessee law matter beyond Tennessee?

The ELVIS Act matters beyond Tennessee for two reasons. It's enforceable now — while the federal NO FAKES Act (S.4591) is still on the Senate calendar, a Tennessee artist already has a statutory claim against commercial voice cloning. And it's the drafting template: the voice-as-property-right structure recurs in other states' bills and in the federal text.

Limits worth stating: it's one state's law, its exemptions (news, parody, commentary) are still being tested, and no significant appellate decision has construed it yet. Our record tracks the statute and will track the first real cases under it.