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# California enacts SB 1050. A synthetic performer disclosure is not a review of the advertisement’s claims.
- URL: https://www.intercepta.ai/blog/sb-1050-synthetic-performers/
- Published: 2026-10-01T09:32:54.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T09:32:54.000Z
- Description: Governor Gavin Newsom signed California Senate Bill 1050 (SB 1050) into law on 16 September 2026, and from 1 January 2027 it requires a disclosure when an advertisement prominently includes a realistic AI-generated performer who is not recognisable as a real, identifiable person.
- Author: Edward Sweigart
- Tags: AI Compliance, California, Synthetic Performers, AI disclosure, #rail

SB 1050, which adds Section 17610 to the Business and Professions Code, makes it “unlawful for any person to create and cause to be published in an advertising medium an advertisement that prominently includes a synthetic performer without a clear and conspicuous disclosure that the advertisement includes a synthetic performer”. The duty therefore applies to a person who both creates the advertisement and causes it to be published. Depending on how production and placement are divided, the duty may apply to the advertiser, its agency or both. The advertising media covered are those that make audio or audiovisual advertisements available to consumers in California. The purpose is consumer transparency, so that a viewer or a listener is told when an apparent human performer is in fact AI-generated.

A synthetic performer, as SB 1050 defines it, is “a digital figure, voice, or representation created in whole or in part using generative artificial intelligence that creates the realistic impression of the audio, audiovisual, or visual performance of a human performer who is not recognizable as any identifiable natural person”. A digital replica of a real, identifiable individual is outside that definition, although other California law may apply to it. The statute defines “prominently” to mean that the synthetic performer is “\[i\]n the foreground and demonstrating or illustrating the product or service”, is “\[p\]roviding or voicing the on- or off-camera narration or commercial message”, or is “\[i\]llustrating or reacting to the on- or off-camera narration or commercial message”. The third limb contains no foreground requirement, so an advertisement in which a background figure illustrates or reacts to the narration or commercial message may still require the disclosure.

SB 1050 was authored by State Senator Angelique Ashby and sponsored by the performers’ union, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), and it was signed at SAG-AFTRA’s headquarters in Los Angeles. In the Office of the Governor of California’s release, SAG-AFTRA’s National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, described the law as “an important step in the broader effort to protect consumers from deceptive AI practices, and to ensure that AI technology isn’t used at the expense of human creativity and consent”.

## The disclosure the statute prescribes

The statute requires that the disclosure “use wording substantially similar to” one of two phrasings, “this performance features a synthetic performer” or “no human performer is depicted”. In the statute’s terms, the disclosure must also be “difficult to miss, easily understandable” and presented so that a reasonable consumer “would notice, read, and comprehend” it. The statutory definition of a clear and conspicuous disclosure includes the qualification “taking into account the medium, format, and context in which the advertisement appears”. The requirement covers audio advertising as well as video. The statute defines an advertisement to mean “any audio, video, or audiovisual message, statement, audiovisual recording, digital communication, or other representation” disseminated to induce, or reasonably expected to induce, the purchase of goods or services, and its definition of a synthetic performer covers a representation that creates the realistic impression of a “visual performance”. Its definition of an advertising medium, however, covers a person or entity that makes available “an audio or audiovisual advertisement”. The coverage of a static image advertisement has therefore not been settled, and such an advertisement may be subject to the requirement. Advertising for expressive works is exempt. The exemption applies to works “including, but not limited to, motion pictures, television programs, streaming content, documentaries, video games, or other similar audio or audiovisual works”, provided that the use of a synthetic performer in the advertisement “is consistent with its use in the expressive work”. A second exemption covers an advertisement in which “the use of the generative artificial intelligence solely involves the language translation of a human performer or other accessibility features”.

![Three cards set out the prominent-use test, under which a synthetic performer demonstrates or illustrates the product or service in the foreground, voices the message, or illustrates or reacts to it, and a note on when no disclosure is required.](https://www.intercepta.ai/blog/content/images/2026/10/fig3-when-required--2400x1400--v4.png)

The disclosure is required only where a synthetic performer is used prominently, and two exemptions are available.

## The requirement is enforceable as false advertising, with criminal and civil penalties

SB 1050 does not create a separate penalty schedule. The statute provides that “\[a\] violation of this section constitutes a violation of Section 17500 and may be enforced pursuant to Chapter 5 (commencing with Section 17200) of Part 2” of Division 7 of the Business and Professions Code, which contains California’s Unfair Competition Law. A missing disclosure is therefore subject to the same enforcement regime as a misleading or untrue claim. Section 17500 provides that a violation “is a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding six months, or by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500), or by both that imprisonment and fine”. Sections 17536 and 17206 each provide for a civil penalty of up to US$2,500 for each violation in an action brought by the Attorney General or another public prosecutor. A private plaintiff who meets the standing requirements of Sections 17535 and 17204, which require that the plaintiff has suffered injury in fact and has lost money or property as a result of the violation, may seek an injunction and restitution. New York’s synthetic performer disclosure law (Chapter 617 of the Laws of 2025), in effect since 9 June 2026, is enforced differently. It provides for fixed civil penalties of US$1,000 for a first violation and US$5,000 for any subsequent violation, and it applies only where the person who “produces or creates an advertisement”, or an agent or employee of that person, has “actual knowledge” that a synthetic performer is in it. Section 17610 contains no equivalent knowledge condition. Section 17500 itself covers statements “known, or which by the exercise of reasonable care should be known, to be untrue or misleading”, and whether that standard applies to a missing disclosure has not been tested, so an advertiser should not assume that a lack of knowledge is a defence.

Once a court has issued an order finding that the advertisement “violates this chapter”, in the words of subdivision (e), or enjoining its creator from publishing it, the advertisement is subject to removal. Section 17610 was added to the chapter of the Business and Professions Code that contains the false advertising law, although the Legislative Counsel’s Digest describes the trigger as an order finding that the advertisement “violates the bill’s provisions”. On the statute’s wording, the trigger could include an order finding that the advertisement violates another provision of that chapter, such as the prohibition on untrue or misleading statements in Section 17500, while on the Digest’s description it is limited to a violation of Section 17610\. The reading a court would adopt has not been settled. The removal duty covers only an advertisement containing a synthetic performer and applies to the persons and businesses that make the advertisement available to consumers in California, among them broadcasters, cable operators, online platforms, streaming services, digital advertising networks and publishers, where they are capable of removing it or halting it. After it is served with the court order and with enough information to identify the advertisement, such a business must remove the advertisement, disable access to it or stop it running in California, and cease accepting payment for its further distribution, “as soon as commercially reasonable and technically feasible”. The removal duty applies in addition to the penalties described above. Section 17610 makes publication without the disclosure unlawful, so for an advertisement first published on or after 1 January 2027, the disclosure belongs in the advertisement from the date it is first published. The statute contains no transitional provision. An advertisement first published before 1 January 2027 and still published after that date may therefore be subject to the requirement, although the duty applies to a person who both creates the advertisement and causes it to be published, which supports the argument that an advertisement created before that date is outside it.

![Four steps showing that an advertisement prominently including a synthetic performer and published without the disclosure violates Section 17500, who may enforce it, and that an advertising medium served with a court order must remove it and stop accepting payment.](https://www.intercepta.ai/blog/content/images/2026/10/fig4-enforcement--2400x1400--v5.png)

A missing disclosure is enforceable as false advertising, and an advertising medium served with a court order must remove the advertisement.

## How California compares with other states

New York’s law, which the Office of the Governor of New York announced as a “first-in-the-nation law”, has required a conspicuous disclosure of synthetic performers in advertising since 9 June 2026\. California has now enacted a comparable requirement, which, unlike New York’s law, covers audio advertising and states no knowledge condition in Section 17610, and which is enforceable as false advertising, as set out above. New York’s law is wider in other respects. Its definition covers an asset “created, reproduced, or modified by computer, using generative artificial intelligence or a software algorithm”, and it contains no equivalent of California’s “prominently” test, so a synthetic performer that does not trigger the California disclosure may still require one in New York where the knowledge condition is met. In Pennsylvania, each chamber has passed its own bill covering a wider range of AI content. The House of Representatives passed House Bill 95 on 17 June 2026\. The bill provides that a person “may not knowingly or willfully disseminate or cause to be disseminated an advertisement containing synthetic advertising content without clear and conspicuous disclosure”. It defines that content as “\[a\]ny images, videos or audio clips used in an advertisement that have been significantly modified or generated by artificial intelligence, in which the use of artificial intelligence materially alters the representation or a reasonable consumer’s perception of the nature, origin, authenticity, performance or endorsements of the goods or services being advertised”. A related Senate measure, Senate Bill 806, passed the Senate on 10 June 2026, and as of 1 October 2026, neither bill had been enacted. For an advertiser running video or audio campaigns across the United States, the practical effect is that one asset can be compliant in one state and exposed in another, and the number of states that require an AI disclosure in commercial advertising will increase when California’s requirement takes effect on 1 January 2027.

![Table comparing New York, California and Pennsylvania on status, formats covered, knowledge required and enforcement, with New York in effect since June 2026, California effective 1 January 2027 and Pennsylvania’s bills each passed by one chamber.](https://www.intercepta.ai/blog/content/images/2026/10/fig1-three-states--2400x1400--v5.png)

Section 17610 covers audio and states no knowledge condition, unlike New York’s law, and Pennsylvania’s bills have not been enacted.

## The disclosure and the substantive review are different obligations

SB 1050 adds a disclosure obligation, and meeting it does not amount to a review of the advertisement’s substance. A disclosure that a performer is AI-generated states how the performer was made. It contains no statement on whether the product claim presented alongside that performer is accurate, whether a required risk warning is present, or whether the advertisement is permitted at all in the market where it is published. Those questions are governed by false advertising and consumer-protection law, including the provisions through which the SB 1050 disclosure will be enforced, and by any sector rules that apply in the market concerned. Subdivision (d) of Section 17610 states that “\[n\]othing in this section shall be construed to” do any of several things, including to “\[a\]ffect or limit any rights or remedies available under Section 17200 or 17500 or any other law concerning deceptive, unfair, or misleading business practices”. The same laws and sector rules applied before SB 1050, and they continue to apply after it.

For a team producing video and audio advertising with generative tools, the volume of output matters. A synthetic performer is quick to generate, so the number of advertisements that require both a disclosure and a substantive review increases with output. The disclosure can be added during production. The substantive review, against the claim rules of every market where the advertisement is published, is a separate task. Each advertisement published without that review becomes compliance debt, and the advertiser is exposed to enforcement for any non-compliant claim it contains.

![Two panels showing that the disclosure states only that the advertisement includes a synthetic performer, and that the accuracy and substantiation of the claim, any required risk warning and permission in each market still need separate review.](https://www.intercepta.ai/blog/content/images/2026/10/fig2-two-obligations--2400x1400--v4.png)

The disclosure states that the advertisement includes a synthetic performer, and the advertisement’s claims still need a separate review.

## A synthetic performer advertisement still needs validation before it runs

The disclosure obligation is narrow in scope and consists of a short disclosure, in the statute’s words, “that the advertisement includes a synthetic performer”. A wider obligation applies at the same time, under which the claims in the advertisement must not be false or misleading, must be substantiated where the applicable rules require it, and must be permitted in each market where the advertisement is published. Once the California requirement takes effect on 1 January 2027, both apply from the moment the advertisement is live, and in California both can be enforced through the same false advertising and unfair competition provisions. The final decision belongs to the function that holds sign-off, typically the compliance team, whose task is to confirm before the advertisement runs that the disclosure is present where it is required and that the substantive claims would satisfy the rules of each market.

## Validate before you publish. Keep the record.

From 1 January 2027, California joins New York in requiring advertisers to disclose AI-generated performers. In California, the duty applies where an advertisement, including an audio advertisement, prominently includes such a performer, and a missing disclosure will be enforceable as false advertising. The disclosure states that the advertisement includes a synthetic performer and contains no statement on the claims presented alongside it, which still require a separate review against the rules of every market where the advertisement is published. If your marketing programme produces AI-generated advertising for more than one market, Intercepta AI was built to validate the claims in that content against the regulatory rules its scanner covers, before it is published.

The scanner covers 1,100+ regulatory rules across the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and each scan returns a documented report that maps each issue to the specific regulation it references, with remediation guidance for your compliance team to review. Marketing teams validate before publication, compliance teams hold a documented regulatory record, and every decision on every finding remains in the remit of your compliance team.

[Scan your first piece of content →](https://www.intercepta.ai/?utm%5Fsource=blog&utm%5Fmedium=cta&utm%5Fcampaign=sb-1050-synthetic-performers-20261001&utm%5Fcontent=cta-button)

## Cross-references

- For New York’s synthetic performer disclosure law, in effect since 9 June 2026, and the pre-publication record an agency needs to show that it complied, see[the analysis of the New York law](https://www.intercepta.ai/blog/new-yorks-ai-disclosure-law-took-effect-on-9-june-does-your-agency-have-the-audit-trail-to-prove-compliance/?utm%5Fsource=blog&utm%5Fmedium=internal&utm%5Fcampaign=sb-1050-synthetic-performers-20261001&utm%5Fcontent=cross-reference).
- For the California AI Transparency Act, signed in 2024, which governs how AI-generated content is marked at source, see[the analysis of that law](https://www.intercepta.ai/blog/california-ai-transparency-act-sb-942/?utm%5Fsource=blog&utm%5Fmedium=internal&utm%5Fcampaign=sb-1050-synthetic-performers-20261001&utm%5Fcontent=cross-reference).
- For the obligation that attaches at publication and then persists, see[the analysis of compliance debt](https://www.intercepta.ai/blog/the-compliance-debt-hiding-in-your-content-library/?utm%5Fsource=blog&utm%5Fmedium=internal&utm%5Fcampaign=sb-1050-synthetic-performers-20261001&utm%5Fcontent=cross-reference).

## Sources

### California

- [California Senate Bill 1050 (Chapter 246, Statutes of 2026), False advertising: synthetic performers, adding Article 10 (commencing with Section 17610) to the Business and Professions Code.](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill%5Fid=202520260SB1050&ref=intercepta.ai)
- [Office of the Governor of California, press release of 16 September 2026 announcing that Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 1050.](https://www.gov.ca.gov/2026/09/16/governor-newsom-signs-new-law-to-protect-workers-require-disclosures-on-ai-generated-advertising/?ref=intercepta.ai)
- [California Business and Professions Code section 17500 (false advertising).](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes%5FdisplaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=17500.&lawCode=BPC&ref=intercepta.ai)
- [California Business and Professions Code section 17535 (injunctions and restitution under the false advertising law, and standing for private actions).](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes%5FdisplaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=17535.&lawCode=BPC&ref=intercepta.ai)
- [California Business and Professions Code section 17536 (civil penalty for false advertising).](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes%5FdisplaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=17536.&lawCode=BPC&ref=intercepta.ai)
- [California Business and Professions Code section 17200 (Unfair Competition Law).](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes%5FdisplaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=17200.&lawCode=BPC&ref=intercepta.ai)
- [California Business and Professions Code section 17204 (standing for private actions under the Unfair Competition Law).](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes%5FdisplaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=17204.&lawCode=BPC&ref=intercepta.ai)
- [California Business and Professions Code section 17206 (civil penalty under the Unfair Competition Law).](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes%5FdisplaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=17206.&lawCode=BPC&ref=intercepta.ai)

### New York

- [Office of the Governor of New York, announcement that the first-in-the-nation law requiring disclosure of AI-generated synthetic performers in advertisements is in effect, June 2026.](https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-first-nation-law-requiring-disclosure-when-advertisements-include-ai?ref=intercepta.ai)
- [New York Senate Bill S8420A (Chapter 617 of 2025), synthetic performer advertising disclosure, in effect 9 June 2026, setting the civil penalty at US$1,000 for a first violation and US$5,000 for any subsequent violation.](https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S8420/amendment/A?ref=intercepta.ai)

### Pennsylvania

- [Pennsylvania House Bill 95 (2025 to 2026 Regular Session), passed by the House of Representatives in June 2026 (124 to 78).](https://www.palegis.us/legislation/bills/2025/hb95?ref=intercepta.ai)
- [Pennsylvania Senate Bill 806 (2025 to 2026 Regular Session), related measure passed by the Senate on 10 June 2026 (48 to 2).](https://www.palegis.us/legislation/bills/2025/sb806?ref=intercepta.ai)