New York Now Requires Ads to Disclose AI 'Synthetic Performers'

An ad featuring a person who doesn’t exist is no longer just a trust problem in New York — it’s a compliance one. On June 9, 2026, the state’s new “synthetic performer” disclosure law took effect, making New York the first state to require advertisers to flag AI-generated human performers directly in the ad itself. For anyone running or vetting creator campaigns, it’s a second disclosure layer stacked on top of rules that already existed.

What the law requires

Governor Kathy Hochul signed the bill (S.8420-A/A.8887-B) on December 11, 2025, amending New York General Business Law § 396-b, as reported by Cooley and McDermott Will & Emery.

A synthetic performer is defined as a digital asset created or modified by computer — using generative AI or another software algorithm — intended to give the impression it’s a human performer, where that “performer” isn’t recognizable as any identifiable real person. Anyone who produces or creates a commercial advertisement featuring one, in any medium, must conspicuously disclose that fact, provided they have actual knowledge a synthetic performer is being used. First violations carry a $1,000 civil penalty; each subsequent violation is $5,000, per ArentFox Schiff’s coverage of the law taking effect.

Because the law applies to any advertisement reaching a New York audience — not just ads produced by New York companies — it functions as a de facto national baseline for advertisers who can’t practically geofence their campaigns.

What’s exempt

The law carves out several categories, per legal analysis from Hunton and Honigman:

• Expressive works — movies, TV, streaming shows, documentaries, and video games — where a synthetic performer’s use in a promotional ad matches its use in the underlying work.
• Audio-only ads.
• AI used solely to translate a real human performer’s speech into another language.
• Publishers, broadcasters, and platforms aren’t liable just for distributing an ad someone else made — the disclosure duty sits with the advertiser and content creator, not the channel carrying it.

Where this lands on creator marketing

New York’s law is about synthetic performers in ads, not about whether a creator’s audience is real — but the two are converging. Brands increasingly run AI spokespeople and fully virtual influencers alongside human creators in the same campaigns, and this law now sits on top of the FTC’s 2023-revised Endorsement Guides, which already extended the definition of “endorser” to cover AI-generated and virtual personas and require disclosure when a reasonable viewer might otherwise assume they’re watching a real person’s genuine opinion.

That means a brand running a synthetic-performer ad that reaches New York now has two separate disclosure obligations to satisfy, from two different regulators, with two different penalty schedules — and neither one goes away because the other is met. We covered the human-facing side of this problem — how to spot a deepfaked or undisclosed AI endorsement yourself — in how to spot a deepfake or AI-generated influencer endorsement.

What this means if you’re vetting a creator

This law doesn’t change how our free checker works — it scores real YouTube and Twitch accounts against their own platform data, and it isn’t built to determine whether a channel itself is run by a synthetic persona. What it does change is the paper trail: a brand that skipped disclosure on a synthetic-performer ad now has two regulators who can act on that, not zero. If you’re doing due diligence on a campaign that involves any AI-generated spokesperson or avatar, ask directly whether that disclosure has been made — the same instinct that already applies to bought followers and undisclosed sponsorships applies here. For the accounts behind the campaign, run a free authenticity check on the YouTube or Twitch handle to see whether the audience and engagement look like a real, organically grown channel, and see the full methodology for exactly what the score does and doesn’t measure.

Sources: Cooley, “New York Enacts ‘Synthetic Performer’ Disclosure Law,” January 2026; McDermott Will & Emery; ArentFox Schiff; Hunton Andrews Kurth; Honigman; FTC, revised Endorsement Guides announcement, June 2023.