Hey everyone, I’ve been reading the text of the "NO FAKES Act" currently in Congress, and it’s worse than I thought. The Tldr: It creates a "digital replica right" for voices/likenesses. That sounds fine for stopping deepfake porn, but the liability language is a trap. It targets anyone who "makes available" a tool that is primarily used for replicas.
The Problem: If you release a TTS model or a voice-conversion RVC model on HuggingFace, and someone else uses it to fake a celebrity, you (the dev) can be liable for statutory damages ($5k-$25k per violation). There is no Section 230 protection here. This effectively makes hosting open weights for audio models a legal s*icide mission unless you are OpenAI or Google.
What I did: I contacted my reps email to flag this as an "innovation killer." If you run a repo or care about open weights, you might want to do the same. We need them to add a "Safe Harbor" for tool devs.
S.1367 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): NO FAKES Act of 2025 | Congress.gov | Library of Congress https://share.google/u6dpy7ZQDvZWUrlfc
UPDATE: ACTION ITEMS (How to actually stop this) If you don't want to go to jail for hosting a repo, you need to make noise now. 1. The "Lazy" Email (Takes 30 seconds): Go to Democracy.io or your Senator’s contact page. Subject: Opposition to NO FAKES Act (H.R. 2794 / S. 1367) - Open Source Liability Message: "I am a constituent and software engineer. I oppose the NO FAKES Act unless it includes a specific Safe Harbor for Open Source Code Repositories. The current 'Digital Fingerprinting' requirement (Section 3) is technically impossible for raw model weights to comply with. This bill effectively bans open-source AI hosting in the US and hands a monopoly to Big Tech. Please amend it to protect tool developers." 2. The "Nuclear" Option (Call them): Call the Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 Ask for Senators Wyden (D) or Massie (R) if you want to thank them for being tech-literate, or call your own Senator to complain. Script: "The NO FAKES Act kills open-source innovation. We need a Safe Harbor for developers who write code, separate from the bad actors who use it."