Your next ad campaign might star someone who was never born, never signed a release, and never cashed a paycheck. As of September 16, your customers have a legal right to know that. Right?
Governor Gavin Newsom just signed Senate Bill 1050 into law. He stood at the headquarters of the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA in Los Angeles to do it. The bill requires clear disclosure whenever a video or audio ad uses an AI-generated performer instead of a real one. So if someone breaks that rule, the ad has to come down.
This is not a story about Hollywood, however. It is instead a story about your marketing department, so stick with me.
What actually happened this week
SB 1050 was authored by state Senator Angelique Ashby of Sacramento. SAG-AFTRA helped write the language itself, too. The law calls the technology a “synthetic performer.” That means an AI-created digital figure, voice, or likeness. It often looks and sounds so real that you cannot tell it apart from an actual person.
Here is the plain-English version. For example, say your company runs a video or audio ad that uses a synthetic performer to sell a product. You now have to say so, clearly. If you do not, and someone catches it, the ad comes down.
Newsom put it simply at the signing. “Californians deserve to know when the person selling them something isn’t a person at all,” he said. Senator Ashby framed it as a labor issue, too. She called the creative economy “the living heartbeat of California.” She also said the bill stops AI from quietly replacing the real people who make ads, shows, and films happen.
The detail most coverage is missing
Almost every article on this bill treats it as an entertainment-industry story. Still, that framing misses the part worth pausing on.
California is now the second state to pass a law like this. New York got there first. Governor Kathy Hochul signed a nearly identical disclosure requirement back in December of 2025, and it took effect in June. So this is not a one-state quirk anymore. It is a pattern, and patterns in state law tend to spread.
Also notice what the law actually regulates. It does not touch the AI model that generated the performer. It also does not touch the training process behind it. It regulates the finished advertisement, the thing your brand actually puts in front of customers. That is a meaningfully different target than most AI regulation you have read about this year. As a result, the compliance burden lands on you, the deployer, not on some lab in San Francisco.
Why this is now your problem, even outside entertainment
Maybe you do not make movies. Instead, maybe you run a mid-size company. You might use AI-generated voiceovers for training videos, AI avatars for product demos, or a synthetic spokesperson to save money. Either way, this law and the New York law before it are early signals. They show you where disclosure rules are heading.
Think about your own pipeline for a second. Which pieces of your customer-facing content use a synthetic voice or face instead of a real person? Do you actually know? If the honest answer is “I would have to ask around,” that is your gap. It is also bigger than California.
Here is the thing about state AI laws in 2026. They move fast, and they do not wait for each other. They definitely do not wait for you, either. Two states have acted already. More will follow, most likely. So the companies that build a habit of disclosure now will not be scrambling later. They will not scramble when a third, fourth, or fifth state passes its own version.
What to actually do about it
I want to keep this practical, so here are four moves you can make this month.
- Inventory your synthetic content. Walk through every ad, video, and voice recording your brand puts out. Mark which ones use an AI-generated performer instead of a real one. You cannot disclose what you have not counted, after all.
- Write a disclosure standard before a regulator writes it for you. Decide, in plain language, what “clear disclosure” means for your brand. On-screen text? A spoken line? Then do it consistently across every channel, not just the ones California can see.
- Run an A.S.K. pass on your creative pipeline. This is where my A.S.K. Framework earns its keep. Look at every task in your ad production process. Then sort each one into three buckets. First, what you can Automate safely. Second, what you should Share between a person and the AI. Finally, what you need to Keep Human, full stop. A synthetic performer standing in for a real actor without anyone’s knowledge belongs in that third bucket, not the first.
- Loop in legal and marketing together, now. This law sits at the intersection of two departments that do not always talk daily. Get them in the same room before your next campaign launches, not after a customer complaint does it for you.
The part I want you to sit with
Two states have now decided something important. Your customers get to know when they are talking to a machine wearing a human face. That is not a Hollywood problem. It is a trust problem, and trust is the one thing no AI tool can manufacture for you.
The organizations that get ahead of this will not be the ones with the flashiest AI-generated ad. They will be the ones customers still trust after everyone finds out how the ad was made.
Your turn. Does your team know, right now, which of your ads or videos use a synthetic performer? Hit reply, or drop it in the comments. I read every one.
Con mucho cariño, sigan adelante.
Sources
- Governor Newsom signs new law to protect workers, require disclosures on AI-generated advertising (Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, Sept. 16, 2026)
- California Law Now Requires Disclosure of AI-Generated Performances in Advertising (SAG-AFTRA, Sept. 17, 2026)
- California joins New York in requiring disclosure of synthetic performers in ads (Transparency Coalition, Sept. 16, 2026)
Cover photo of a commercial video shoot by Jakob Owens on Unsplash. In-body photo of a video camera on a tripod by Billy Freeman on Unsplash.