synthetic performer.

New York Senate bill 8420-A, signed as chapter 617 on 11 December 2025, adds the term to General Business Law 396-b. The statute defines it as a digitally created asset made or modified by computer using generative artificial intelligence or a software algorithm, intended to create the impression that it is engaging in a visual or audiovisual performance of a human performer who is not any identifiable natural performer. Anyone who produces or creates an advertisement for property or a service must conspicuously disclose that a synthetic performer is in it, where that person has actual knowledge, at a civil penalty of one thousand dollars for a first violation and five thousand for each one after. The act took effect on the one hundred eightieth day after becoming law, which is 9 June 2026. Subdivision 8 exempts the medium, so the duty sits on the seller and not on the marketplace, the ad network, or the platform whose stock mockup supplied the model. A shop that has never opened an AI tool is inside this rule the moment its print partner's default mockup contains one.