What Is My Digital Identity?

As artists and performers who have experienced the power and peril of digital technology, we write to you today not just as professional entertainers, but as concerned American citizens and legal US residents.

Our profession has made us uniquely qualified to sound an urgent alarm about a threat to our national security and public trust: the hijacking of digital identity through artificial intelligence.

We are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, because digital identity is our livelihood. When our voices and faces are stolen, we cannot work. So, pay us for the use of our property.

But this crisis extends far beyond entertainment.

Deepfake robocalls have already suppressed voters. Synthetic media has impersonated government officials. Voice cloning has enabled multi-million-dollar fraud schemes. Childrens’ voices have been cloned to scam their parents and their likenesses used in deepfake pornography. Doctors' voices have been stolen to spread dangerous medical advice.

We cannot expect individuals to catch infinitely scalable AI threats. We need automated systems to verify digital identities, just as we use multi-factor authentication to protect our accounts.

As performers, we understand digital identity protection – it's our business. We get new headshots, record our voices, and protect our likenesses because they are our sole source of income. Now we're asking you to protect all Americans.

Please protect all Americans from our enemies, foreign and domestic.

We urge you to support legislation that:

1. Requires informed consent for using anyone's digital identity
2. Mandates traceable digital watermarks to track unauthorized content
3. Requires media platforms to verify digital content via the blockchain before display

The technology to steal and manipulate digital identities is already widespread. The technology to protect Americans must be robust.  Our US Congress and California can lead the way.

Signed,