Synthetic performer disclosure · N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law § 396-b

Your AI Presenter Is Running In New York. Nobody Wrote Down Who Confirmed She Was Synthetic.

The disclosure duty turns on what you actually knew. That makes the provenance record your defence — and “the agency said it was fine” in a Slack thread from March is not a record. This is the register that holds the decision, per ad and per market, with the evidence behind it.

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$1,000 / $5,000
the civil-penalty amounts published in § 396-b
first violation, then each subsequent one
9 Jun 2026
the New York statute’s effective date
and the first US law of its kind
$19
once, for the register and the audit pack
no seats, no subscription, no account

Three situations that look identical in a spreadsheet

They are not the same question, they do not have the same answer, and a single “used AI?” column collapses all three into one wrong one.

In scope

A fully synthetic performer

A generated human who is not recognisable as any real individual. This is what a synthetic-performer disclosure statute is actually about, and the only one of the three that lands here.

Different law

A real person, altered or replicated

A face swap, a de-ageing pass, a generated double of someone identifiable. That is the digital-replica question — different consents, different paperwork. The app routes it away rather than quietly filing it as a disclosure.

Out of scope

AI products and backgrounds

Generated sets, objects, environments, with no AI human on screen. Out of scope of this duty — recorded as a decision you made, not as a gap someone has to re-litigate later.

And a fourth state that most trackers refuse to have: not yet confirmed. When the footage vendor has not answered, that is an open risk sitting at the top of your register — never a silent slide into “no disclosure needed”.

What each record holds

One record per ad, filled in before it goes live.

1

The knowledge record, because that is the gate

Who confirmed the synthetic performer, on what date, and from which source: in-house, agency, stock vendor, or asked-and-never-answered. That last one is a first-class state here, and it surfaces as an open risk rather than resolving itself.

2

Coverage is ad × market, not a property of the asset

The same creative can be in scope in one state and out of scope in another. Markets come from a jurisdiction list you maintain yourself, seeded with New York and editable as the rest of the patchwork moves — because it is still moving.

3

The exemption that revokes itself

The expressive-works carve-out is conditional. Cut that footage into a standalone ad and the exemption is gone — the single most-missed case in every source on this. So it is a deliberate control on the form, flagged in red, not a checkbox buried on page two.

4

Provenance you could actually hand over

Tool, model, version, vendor, whether the prompt was retained and where, C2PA credentials, and whether a contractual warranty about the vendor’s generative-AI use is on file. A disclosure with nothing behind it is recorded as incomplete, not as compliant.

What it looks like

Six assets from one advertiser. The register bands them worst-first, so the ads that need a decision are always at the top.

Halden & Co Marketing — advertising asset register
as at 2 Aug 2026
1
Disclosure required, none recorded
1
Knowledge unconfirmed
1
Disclosed, evidence incomplete
1
Compliant
2
Out of scope
AdFormatMarketClassificationDisclosureStatus
Autumn Range — 30s hero cutConnected TV · live VideoNew York Fully synthetic None recorded Disclosure required
Winter Teaser — stock b-rollSocial · vendor chased twice VideoNew York Not yet confirmed None recorded Knowledge unconfirmed
Documentary trailer recut as pre-rollExemption claimed, then revoked AudiovisualNew York Fully synthetic Opening card Evidence incomplete
Spring Range — static keyvisualDisplay · full provenance held StaticNew York Fully synthetic On screen Compliant
Founder anniversary filmDe-aged with consent on file VideoNew York Digital replica Not applicable Out of scope
Radio spot — synthetic voice readNo on-screen performer Audio onlyNew York Fully synthetic Not applicable Out of scope
The pre-roll is the interesting one. It was cut from a documentary and the expressive-works exemption was claimed for the original film — but the recut sells product, so the exemption is revoked and the asset is back in scope. It carries a disclosure, so it is not the worst row here; it sits in evidence incomplete because there are no Content Credentials on the delivered file and no vendor warranty on record. The founder film is out of scope of this duty because it is a real person’s likeness, which is the separate digital-replica path. The radio spot is out of scope because there is no performer on screen, though other advertising rules can still apply.

Every write-up of this statute ends the same way: build the register before the first ad ships. None of them gives you the register. Your options are a $40k governance platform aimed at model risk, or a spreadsheet with one AI column and no evidence behind it. This is the thing in between, for $19, once.

One file. One payment.

Buy it, open it, start logging. No account, no subscription, no seat count.

Synthetic Performer Disclosure Log
$19
One-time purchase
Yours to keep. No renewal, no per-seat pricing.
  • Ad and asset register across 9 channels, 4 formats and 4 asset states
  • Three-way classification: synthetic performer, digital replica, or no AI human
  • Knowledge record with a first-class “unconfirmed, vendor has not answered” state
  • User-maintained jurisdiction list, seeded with New York and fully editable
  • Expressive-works exemption with an explicit repurposed-into-an-ad revocation control
  • Disclosure record: wording, placement, and translated-version tracking
  • Provenance block: tool, model, version, vendor, prompt, C2PA, contractual warranty
  • Five-band status engine and a dashboard filterable by campaign, market, format and band
  • Printable audit pack: register, per-ad detail sheets and the disclosure inventory
  • CSV export plus JSON backup, import and merge
  • Installs to your phone or desktop and works fully offline
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Instant access after payment. Runs entirely in your browser — no ad names, vendors or prompts are ever uploaded.

Before you buy

Does it tell me whether I legally need a disclosure?

No, and it says so on every screen and in the printed pack. It applies the rules you have recorded to the facts you have recorded, and shows you which ads have a thin record. What that means for your campaign is a question for your own counsel.

The law is changing. Won’t the jurisdiction list be stale in a month?

That is exactly why the list is yours rather than baked in. New York ships seeded with its citation, effective date and published penalty amounts; the other states ship as editable placeholders you fill in and mark verified. Unverified entries are flagged in the register and in the printed pack so nobody mistakes a placeholder for research.

We already have an AI column in our asset tracker. What’s different?

Four things a column cannot do: it separates a synthetic performer from an altered real person, it keeps “unconfirmed” as its own state rather than an empty cell, it treats coverage as ad × market instead of a property of the asset, and it makes the repurposed-into-an-ad exemption revocation an explicit control rather than something you have to remember.

What about audio-only ads?

The app records them and marks them outside this particular statute, while noting that other advertising rules can still apply. The point is that the decision is written down with a reason, not that the record is missing.

Where does the data go?

Nowhere. It is a single HTML file that stores everything in your own browser. You will be typing in vendor names, prompts and internal notes, so that matters. Export a JSON backup or a CSV whenever you want a copy or need to hand the register to someone else.