Katie Wright Morrone

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Katie Wright Morrone is a civil litigator with vast experience representing clients in complex and high-profile matters in all stages of litigation and dispute resolution. Katie is regularly engaged in prominent, highly publicized matters, while also handling extremely confidential matters that are routinely resolved without ever getting to litigation. She is particularly sensitive to, and adept at managing, the competing interests clients must balance during or in anticipation of litigation.

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In late March, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed into law the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act of 2024—known as the “ELVIS Act”—making Tennessee the first state to address head-on potential misuses of artificial intelligence (AI) related to an individual’s voice. The law prohibits individuals from using AI to generate and distribute replicas of another’s voice or image without their prior consent.

Many prominent members of the music and entertainment community have identified Tennessee’s law as an important step forward for the protection of artists’ (and others’) voice and likeness. Specifically, right of publicity laws across the nation typically provide that individuals have a property right in the use of their name, photograph, and likeness. However, these laws generally do not address the use of one’s voice or generative AI exploiting another’s image, likeness, or voice to generate unauthorized impersonations or replicas. In the age of AI cloning and deep fakes, these unauthorized works have caused great concern among those in the entertainment and media industries. The ELVIS Act is “first-of-its-kind” legislation to directly address these concerns by expanding Tennessee’s existing protections against the unauthorized commercial use of one’s rights of publicity.Continue Reading Tennessee Out Front: Enacting Protections Against AI Misuse in the Music Industry

On Thursday, October 12, a bipartisan group of senators—Chris Coons (D-Del.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)—released a Discussion Draft of the Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (dubbed the “NO FAKES”) Act that would protect the voice, image, or visual likeness of all individuals from unauthorized AI-generated digital replicas, also referred to as “deepfakes.” This draft bill, while focusing on protections required by the advancement of AI, would establish the first federal right of publicity—the right to protect and control the use of one’s voice, image, and visual likeness. The NO FAKES Act could have widespread impacts on the entertainment and media industries, among others. 

Generative AI has opened new worlds of creative opportunities, but with these creative innovations also comes the ability to exploit another’s voice, image, or visual likeness by creating nearly indistinguishable digital replicas. This has caused great concern among musicians, celebrities, actors, and politicians regarding viral AI-created deepfakes circulating on social media and the Internet more broadly. To date, advancements in AI technology used to create digital replicas have outpaced the current legal framework governing unauthorized use. Although there are existing laws that may be used to combat digital replicas, these laws either vary from state to state, creating a patchwork of differing protections based on where one is located, or do not directly address the harms caused by producing and distributing unauthorized digital replicas.Continue Reading AI Deepfake Bill: Senators Contemplate the First Federal Right of Publicity

Members of Venable’s Consumer Financial Services Practice, along with Paula-Rose Stark, a former attorney at the CFPB, now with Chain Bridge Partners, LLC, ‎recently discussed the current and evolving state of federal and state consumer financial protection law and policy. They outlined what you and your company need to know about what’s ahead and shared their experiences from the front lines, offering insights and strategies to help companies navigate the evolving legal and political landscape.

Topics included:

  • The impact of the current political climate on enforcement actions;
  • Interacting, negotiating, and litigating with the CFPB;
  • Tips for managing risk due to enforcement investigations and actions;
  • Crisis management strategies;
  • New administration: prospects for reform and leadership changes;
  • Examination: lessons learned and preparing for the future; and
  • CFPB, State Attorneys General, and other enforcement agency developments, and what’s next.

Continue Reading Consumer Finance Enforcement Activity in a New Administration