The Pulse
California Requires AI Performer Disclosures in Ads
Governor Gavin Newsom signed California Senate Bill 1050 on September 16, requiring video and audio advertisements to disclose when they use performers generated by artificial intelligence. The law also bars continued use of advertisements
AI.info Team ·
Newsom Signs SB 1050 at SAG-AFTRA Headquarters
California now requires advertisements to tell consumers when the performer selling a product or service was generated by artificial intelligence. Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1050 on September 16, 2026, at the Los Angeles headquarters of SAG-AFTRA, the bill’s sponsor.
The law applies to video and audio advertisements that use AI-generated performers. It also prohibits the continued use of an advertisement found to violate the disclosure requirement, adding an enforcement consequence beyond the label itself.
“Californians deserve to know when the person selling them something isn’t a person at all,” Newsom said in the announcement. He described the measure as a way to protect consumers and performers while supporting California’s creative economy.
What SB 1050 Requires From Advertisers
SB 1050 targets advertisements that create the impression that a human performer is appearing, speaking or otherwise participating when the figure, voice or representation was generated by AI. The governor’s office describes a synthetic performer as an AI-created digital figure, voice or representation that can be difficult to distinguish from an actual person.
The law requires an explicit disclosure when an advertisement uses such a performer to sell goods or services. A legislative analysis of the measure describes the required notice as “clear and conspicuous,” meaning it must be presented in a way that consumers can reasonably notice and understand within the advertisement’s medium and format.
California’s rule covers more than a digitally rendered actor on screen. Because the measure applies to video and audio advertising, its scope includes synthetic voices and other generated representations used in commercial messages.
Why Performers’ Unions Backed the Measure
SAG-AFTRA helped craft the bill and has made consent, compensation and control over digital replicas central issues in negotiations with entertainment companies. The union’s support places SB 1050 alongside California laws addressing the use of performers’ likenesses in audio and visual productions.
“The bill requires that synthetic figures be labeled as such, thus protecting consumers from false advertising and disallowing AI to replace real people,” Senator Angelique Ashby, the bill’s author, said in the governor’s announcement. Ashby represents Sacramento and is identified by the governor’s office as a Democrat.
Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director and chief negotiator, said the measure gives consumers greater transparency about whether they are seeing synthetic or human performers. He added that the union wants AI technology used without sacrificing human creativity and consent.
The Law Fits Into California’s Broader AI Rules
SB 1050 expands a series of California laws addressing generated media, digital replicas and automated systems. Newsom signed legislation last year designed to help actors and performers protect their digital likenesses in audio and visual productions, including rules governing the recreation of deceased performers’ likenesses.
The state also enacted the California AI Transparency Act in 2024. The governor’s office says that law requires AI watermarking and directs companies to provide tools and disclosures that help people assess whether content was created or altered by AI systems.
SB 1050 focuses on a narrower question: whether a commercial audience is told that the apparent performer in an advertisement is synthetic. The measure does not, according to the governor’s announcement, prohibit synthetic advertising altogether. It requires the commercial message to identify what consumers are seeing or hearing.
Disclosure Becomes Part of the Ad Production Process
The practical effect will fall on brands, agencies, production companies and the advertising outlets that distribute commercial content in California. Teams using generated faces, voices or other performer-like assets will need to account for the disclosure while creating and placing an advertisement, rather than treating the notice as a separate consumer-protection issue after publication.
The governor’s office says the law strengthens protections for workers in California’s creative economy while giving consumers information about the origin of a commercial performance. It also establishes a direct connection between AI-generated talent and false-advertising rules, a connection that may matter when synthetic figures are presented as if they were human endorsers.
SB 1050 was signed on September 16, 2026. Its immediate significance is concrete: an advertisement using an AI-generated performer to sell a product or service must make that fact clear to the audience, and an advertisement found to violate the rule cannot continue running.