New York’s synthetic performer disclosure requirement

Since June 9, 2026, N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law § 396-b has required that a commercial advertisement depicting a synthetic performer carry a conspicuous disclosure of that fact. The concept the law reaches is a digitally created, reproduced or modified asset — generated through artificial intelligence or other software — that creates the impression of a human performer but is not recognizable as any actual person.

That definition is the part worth reading twice, because it cuts in an unexpected direction. A digital replica of a real, identifiable actor is a different problem, governed by consent law. The synthetic performer rule is aimed at the figure who looks like a person and is no one: the generated spokesperson, the crowd of invented faces, the presenter who does not exist. Productions that carefully cleared their real performers sometimes miss this entirely, because nobody’s likeness was used and it did not feel like a rights question.

Penalties are $1,000 for a first violation and $5,000 for each subsequent violation.

Where the creator of the advertisement produces it with actual knowledge that it features a synthetic performer, the disclosure obligation runs to that producer or creator — not solely to the brand that commissioned it. For a production company, that is the operative sentence. You cannot assume the client’s legal department owns this because the client owns the media buy.

“Actual knowledge” makes the internal record matter. Who knew the figure was generated, and when? If a vendor delivered a generated presenter and told the producer so in a delivery note, that note is now part of the compliance picture. If the vendor did not disclose it and the production had no reason to know, that is a materially different position — but only if you can show it.

The practical consequence is that AI usage disclosure from vendors stops being hygiene and becomes evidence. A vendor attestation that names the tools used and states whether any depicted human figure is generated is the cleanest way to fix knowledge, one way or the other, at the time it is acquired.

New York requires a conspicuous disclosure that a synthetic performer appears in the advertisement. $1,000 for a first violation, $5,000 for each one after. The statute prescribes no wording, placement, duration or type size, so ClearFrame supplies language that meets the conspicuousness standard and records the placement decision alongside it.

“Conspicuous” carries its ordinary meaning: a disclosure a reasonable viewer notices in the ordinary course of viewing the ad on the device it runs on. For video, that means legible on a phone screen, held long enough to read, and not competing with other supers. For audio, it means spoken. For static, it means near the depiction rather than in a footer with the legal copy.

Record the decision, not just the output: the disclosure you used, where it sat, how long it held, and who approved it. A contemporaneous record of a reasoned choice is a far stronger position than a rendered file with a super on it and nothing behind it.

The requirement attaches to commercial advertising in New York. For a production company, the practical trigger is therefore the media plan, not the location of the shoot or the edit. A spot cut in Los Angeles for a national buy that includes New York is in scope; a spot that never runs in New York is not, on the face of it, reached by this rule — though other states and platform policies may still apply.

That makes airing footprint a fact you have to capture early and re-check late. Media plans change after creative is locked. A spot that was regional when the disclosure decision was made and national when it shipped needs the decision revisited, and that re-check is worth a dated note in the file.