{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.welch.senate.gov/welch-calls-for-support-to-advance-bipartisan-no-fakes-act-in-judiciary-committee-markup/", "Welch\u00a0Calls for\u00a0Support to\u00a0Advance Bipartisan\u00a0\"NO FAKES Act\"\u00a0in Judiciary Committee Markup", "2026-06-18", "2026", "2026-06", "Democrat", "Senate", "VT", "Peter Welch", "W000800", "www.welch.senate.gov", "welch", "https://www.welch.senate.gov/category/press-release/page/", "scraper", "Bipartisan legislation would address the use of non-consensual digital replications in audiovisual works or sound recordings\n\nWASHINGTON, D.C. \u2014 U.S. Senator Peter Welch (D-Vt.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, today expressed support for the advancement of the Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe Act (NO FAKES) Act, bipartisan legislation led by Senate Judiciary Committees colleagues Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), which would empower artists to access the courts to protect their copyrighted works when they are used to train generative AI models, and protect creators from harmful deepfakes.\n\n\u201cMy colleague and our U.S. Representative in Congress, Becca Balint, had a deep-fake experience\u2026It was pretty appalling. It was her image; it was her voice. It was not her words; it was not satire. It was asserting\u2014through her mouth\u2014positions that she absolutely and completely is against. And there was no indication that this was AI-enhanced. The reality of the world we live in is that it is very difficult for people to see that this is a fake; that this was a fake, and it was totally and completely realistic,\u201d said Senator Welch.\n\n\u201cThe NO FAKES Act, I believe, is necessary to protect truth, identity, and creativity. So, I\u2019m happy to be a cosponsor. But I think that none of us can underestimate the perils of what happens when image and likeness is appropriated illegally, now, to create confusion and chaos,\u201d the Senator concluded.\n\nWatch the Senator\u2019s remarks below:\n\nThe NO FAKES Act would address the use of non-consensual digital replications in audiovisual works or sound recordings. Learn more about the bill here.\n\nIn April, Senators Welch and Blackburn held a roundtable on Capitol Hill with more than 20 artists to discuss the Senators\u2019 bipartisan TRAIN Act, which would help creators access the courts to protect their copyrighted works if and when they are used to train generative AI models. The artists visited Capitol Hill as part of the Recording Academy\u2019s GRAMMYs on the Hill Advocacy Day.\n\nCurrently, there is no reliable way for copyright owners to determine if AI companies used their works without permission to train AI models. Copyright owners\u2014particularly small creators\u2014are struggling to navigate novel legal issues posed by AI copying their work. There are very few AI companies that share how their models were trained and nothing in current law requires them to disclose training materials to creators.\n\nWith the rapid advance of generative AI, artists and creators have already begun to see their voices and likenesses used without their consent in videos and songs created as nearly indistinguishable replicas.\n\n###", 1, "2026-06-19T06:50:32Z", "2026-06-19T06:53:40Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.welch.senate.gov/welch-calls-for-support-to-advance-bipartisan-no-fakes-act-in-judiciary-committee-markup/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.5373439528048038, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}