Two Blueprints, Different Controls
The Copyright Office recommendation and the introduced SOUL Act both respond to the same gap, but they do not create the same kind of control. This chapter compares them using the same questions: what is protected, who receives the right, when liability begins, how consent ends, what platforms must do, and how speech and state law are treated. The comparison helps readers predict consequences for an ordinary person, a licensed performer, a platform, and an expressive work without treating either document as enacted law.
The Office’s report is a policy recommendation from 2024. H.R. 8323 is a bill introduced in 2026 and referred to the House Judiciary Committee. The documents therefore have different authority and different levels of detail. The comparison is not a claim that one is the final negotiated version of the other. It is a way to see which policy choices change the answer to “who controls this face or voice?”
The Protected Object and the Control Lifecycle
The first difference is the object each design puts at the center. The Office recommends a federal right aimed at digital replicas that are so realistic they are difficult to distinguish from authentic depictions. The proposed subject is narrow in one sense: it does not automatically cover every caricature, reference, catchphrase, or artistic style. But the recommended right is broad in another sense because it would protect all individuals, including people with no fame or commercial value.
The SOUL Act starts with a broader definition of “unique likeness.” It would include a person’s name, image, physical appearance, movements, habits, style, natural and AI-generated voice reproductions, certain biometric and genetic information in specified commercial contexts, and related avatars, deepfakes, and AI-generated identity data. Its digital-replica definition would cover a technological representation that reproduces or simulates that likeness without authorization. The bill’s language could reach more kinds of identity signal than the Office’s realism-focused recommendation, although the exact reach would depend on interpretation.
This is a coverage-versus-precision trade-off. The Office’s threshold gives a court a reason to exclude a loose resemblance or ordinary cultural reference. The SOUL Act’s list may adapt more easily when a new system reproduces a person through a medium that is not yet familiar, but a broad list can make the boundary harder to draw. If a system copies an identifiable mannerism or style without creating a near-authentic recording, the two designs may ask different initial questions. Under the Office’s approach, the issue is whether the output is a convincing replica. Under the bill, the issue may begin with whether the output reproduces a listed trait.
The second difference is who receives the right. The Office recommends protection for all individuals because the harms it identifies—fraud, harassment, blackmail, pornography, and dignity injury—do not depend on fame. The SOUL Act would vest ownership automatically in the U.S. citizen to whom the unique likeness belongs, from birth or upon development or acquisition, without registration. That is strong automatic protection for the people within its stated citizenship and interstate-commerce scope, but it is not the same as a rule that expressly covers every individual regardless of citizenship.
The distinction is visible in an ordinary-person scenario. A student’s face is inserted into an explicit image, or a private person’s voice is cloned for a family scam. The Office’s design clearly aims to cover the person even without a marketable identity.