Digital Likeness and Voice Rights Act (HB 513, 2025), unauthorized AI depiction liability

The Digital Likeness and Voice Rights Act gives a Montana resident, or a person domiciled in Montana at death, a property right in their own name, voice, and visual likeness, freely transferable and descendible, that does not expire on death and continues for 20 years afterward in the rights holder's executors, heirs, transferees, or devisees.

A person is liable for actual damages and any profits from the unauthorized use if, without the consent of the individual or the rights holder, the person distributes, transmits, or otherwise makes available an algorithm, software, tool, or other technology whose primary purpose, known to that person, is to produce an unauthorized digital voice or visual depiction of a particular, identified individual for commercial use, or if the person intentionally publishes or distributes such a depiction for commercial use knowing it is unauthorized.

A digital voice or visual depiction is one newly created or altered using digital technology so that it is nearly indistinguishable from the individual's actual voice or likeness and a reasonable person would believe it genuine. A person who held an objectively reasonable belief that the material did not qualify as an unauthorized depiction is not liable for damages.

The action may be brought by the individual or by an assignee, transferee, or exclusive licensee of the rights, within 4 years of discovery of the violation, and does not apply to a provider of broadband internet access service.

Exemptions, to the extent the use is protected by the First Amendment and the Montana Constitution's free expression clause, cover news-gathering, public affairs and sports reporting, comment, criticism, scholarship, satire and parody, and an individual's authentic self-representation in an audiovisual work. The act took effect January 1, 2026 under its own effective-date clause. It directs its own codification as part of Title 30, chapter 14.