What Is the Right of Publicity?

The right of publicity is a legal doctrine that grants individuals the exclusive right to control and profit from the commercial use of their identity — including their name, image, likeness, voice, signature, and other recognizable personal attributes. It is the primary legal mechanism in the United States for protecting individuals against unauthorized commercial exploitation of their persona. The right exists at the intersection of intellectual property law, privacy law, and First Amendment protections.

Unlike privacy rights, which protect against intrusion and disclosure, the right of publicity is fundamentally an economic right. It recognizes that a person’s identity has commercial value and that the individual — not third parties — should control and benefit from that value.

The right of publicity in the United States is governed by a patchwork of state laws rather than a unified federal statute. Approximately 35 states recognize some form of the right, either through statute or common law. Notable statutes include California Civil Code Section 3344, New York Civil Rights Law Sections 50-51, and Indiana’s Right of Publicity Act. The scope, duration, and post-mortem applicability of these rights vary significantly by jurisdiction. In some states, publicity rights expire at death; in others, they persist for up to 100 years.

Internationally, comparable protections exist under different legal frameworks. The European Union addresses identity protection through the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), privacy directives, and unfair competition law. The United Kingdom relies on passing off doctrine and privacy law rather than a standalone publicity right.

The AI Challenge

The emergence of generative AI has exposed significant gaps in existing right of publicity frameworks. Traditional statutes were designed to address the unauthorized use of a person’s existing image in advertising — not the creation of entirely new synthetic content generated by AI systems trained on a person’s biometric data. This distinction between reproduction and generation creates legal ambiguity that current law does not adequately resolve. The $975 million Khaby Lame transaction in January 2026 underscored the urgent need for updated legal frameworks governing AI identity commercialization.

See also: Personality Rights, AI Likeness, Generative Identity Licence, Biometric Sovereignty