California's 2024 law voids vague AI-replica contract clauses

The persona

No single persona anchors this entry. The subject is Assembly Bill 2602, a California labor-law measure Governor Newsom approved on 17 September 2024 as Chapter 259 of the Statutes of 2024. Rather than creating a right against outside imitators, as its companion AB 1836 does for deceased performers, this bill regulates contracts between a living performer and the studio, label, or platform that employs them, addressing the moment a synthetic persona is built directly out of a real worker's own voice or likeness under contract.

What the documents establish

The enacted text, adding Labor Code section 927, makes a contract provision unenforceable, but only as it applies to a new performance fixed on or after 1 January 2025 using a digital replica of the individual, if three conditions hold: the provision lets the other party use a digital replica of the person's voice or likeness in place of work performed in person; it lacks a reasonably specific description of how the replica may be used; and the individual signed without legal counsel who negotiated replica-specific terms in writing, or without a union contract addressing digital-replica uses. The Legislature's bill status record shows the measure was enrolled 9 September 2024 and signed the same day as AB 1836, using an identical definition of digital replica.

Character versus company

The law's target is not a persona's on-screen behavior but the contract language a company uses to acquire the right to build one. A studio that gives a performer specific, written notice of how their digital replica will be used, or that negotiates the replacement through a union agreement covering digital replicas, can still enforce such a clause; what the statute voids is a vague, catch-all clause placed in a standard services agreement without that specificity or representation. The distinction matters for any operator whose persona is modeled on a real contracted performer: the persona's voice may be a studio's property under one contract and legally unusable for a new synthetic performance under another, depending on how the agreement was negotiated.

What to watch

Because the provision only reaches new performances fixed on or after 1 January 2025, no enforcement history yet exists in the sources reviewed here to show how courts assess whether a description of intended uses was reasonably specific. This is an editorial read: the law effectively pushes digital-replica terms out of boilerplate and into either individually negotiated contracts or collective bargaining, which could reshape which performers have leverage over synthetic versions of themselves.

• Did a specific performer's contract rely on AB 2602 to void a digital-replica clause, and what happened next?
• Does the union or guild representing a given performer have a collective bargaining agreement that expressly addresses digital-replica uses?
• How specific is the description of intended uses in a contract creating a persona from a real performer's likeness?

AB 2602's text establishes a narrow rule: a digital-replica clause in a services contract only survives scrutiny if it is specific and the worker had real representation when signing. What a particular contract behind a particular persona actually says remains outside what these public records can show.