Three years after it first failed to advance, the AI Labeling Act is back. Senators Brian Schatz (D-HI), John Curtis (R-UT), and Mark Warner (D-VA) introduced the AI Labeling Act of 2026 on Thursday (June 25), bipartisan legislation that would require generative AI systems to attach visible, machine-readable disclosures to AI-generated audio, video, and images, identifying both the system that created the content and the timestamp of creation. The bill’s endorsement list includes SAG-AFTRA, the Songwriters Guild of America, Music Creators North America, the Society of Composers and Lyricists, and the National Association of Voice Actors, signaling that the music and performance industries see federal labeling requirements as a genuine priority rather than a symbolic gesture.
The mechanics of the bill are specific. Providers of generative AI systems would be required to attach a clear, conspicuous disclosure to AI-generated content, paired with a machine-readable record identifying the system used and the time of creation. Large platforms with at least 10 million monthly US users or more than $1.5 billion in annual revenue would be required to preserve and surface those disclosures, and would be explicitly barred from stripping them out. Any AI chatbot would separately have to identify itself as an artificial intelligence system to users. The Federal Trade Commission would enforce the requirements, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology would convene a working group tasked with developing technical standards for labeling and detecting AI-generated content. Schatz framed the bill’s purpose in plain terms: “People deserve to know whether the videos, photos, and content they see and read online are real or not. Our bill is simple: if any digital content is made by AI, it should be labeled so that people are aware and aren’t fooled or scammed.”
Curtis emphasized the consumer trust angle, while Warner positioned the bill as an opportunity for US leadership on a global regulatory question that other jurisdictions are already moving on. “Jurisdictions around the globe are moving to adopt common-sense rules around labeling AI-generated content,” Warner said. “It’s time for the U.S. to catch up and in fact lead the world with a disclosure and anti-circumvention model that should be the global standard.” Tim Friedlander, President and Co-Founder of the National Association of Voice Actors, brought the legislation directly back to the music and performance industry’s most acute concern: “Voice actors are already seeing their voices cloned, synthesized, and deployed without any clear disclosure.” That concern echoes directly the dynamic playing out in Lionel Richie’s recent trademark filings for his own voice and lyrics, which Gerben IP described as an artist seeking new legal tools specifically because existing protections had not caught up to AI cloning capability.
The bill’s reintroduction lands at a moment when the recorded music industry is building its own labeling infrastructure in parallel, largely because federal legislation has not yet arrived. Tidal published a formal AI policy this week that demonetizes fully AI-generated music and tags it with a visible badge, going further than any other major streaming platform by cutting off royalty payments entirely rather than simply labeling content. Deezer has been detecting and tagging AI-generated music at the platform level since June 2025 and reported receiving approximately 75,000 fully AI-generated tracks daily, representing 44% of all new uploads to its platform. Apple Music launched Transparency Tags in March, asking labels and distributors to declare AI-generated recordings at the point of delivery, while Spotify began testing AI tags in song credits in April, though that system depends entirely on voluntary disclosure through labels and distributors rather than platform-level detection.
What the AI Labeling Act would add to that patchwork of platform-level efforts is a uniform federal floor that applies regardless of which platform content reaches. Right now, an artist could have AI-generated music labeled on Tidal and Deezer but completely unlabeled if it migrates to a platform that has not built its own detection infrastructure. The bill does not name music streaming services specifically, applying instead to the broader category of audio, video, and image content across the internet, but its provisions would directly affect every music platform once finalized. A separate but related piece of legislation, the NO FAKES Act, which would establish a federal intellectual property right in a person’s voice and likeness for the first time, was reintroduced in May with backing from UMG, Sony Music, Warner Music Group, and Spotify. Together, the two bills represent the music industry’s clearest legislative ask of 2026: a federal disclosure standard for AI content and a federal property right in voice and likeness, both designed to give artists legal tools that currently do not exist at the federal level. Whether either bill clears committee this time, after the original AI Labeling Act failed twice before, remains the open question.
