Anti-AIPerson

Marsha Blackburn

U.S. Senator

Tennessee senator championing the NO FAKES Act against AI voice and likeness cloning — who broke with her own party in 2025 to kill the federal moratorium on state AI laws that would have shelved Tennessee’s ELVIS Act.

Politician

Wikipedia AI moratorium removal announcement

In her words

Tennessee passed the ELVIS Act, which is like our first generation of the NO FAKES Act. And we certainly know that, in Tennessee, we need those protections, and until we pass something that is federally preemptive, we can’t call for a moratorium on those things.

— Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing, 2025

Until Congress passes federally preemptive legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act and an online privacy framework, we can’t block states from standing in the gap to protect vulnerable Americans from harm.

— Senate press release, 2025

Biography

Marsha Blackburn (born 1952) is the senior U.S. senator from Tennessee, a conservative Republican whose Nashville constituency — songwriters, session musicians, and the country music industry — has made her one of Congress’s fiercest opponents of unauthorized AI cloning.

ELVIS, NO FAKES, and the moratorium revolt

Blackburn championed Tennessee’s ELVIS Act, signed in 2024 as the first state law protecting artists’ voices from AI imitation, and is a lead co-sponsor of the federal NO FAKES Act with Chris Coons and Amy Klobuchar, which would create a nationwide right against unauthorized AI replicas of voice and likeness. The bill is backed by the recording industry and Human Artistry Campaign allies.

Her defining moment came in mid-2025, when Republicans tried to attach a ten-year moratorium on state AI laws to the One Big Beautiful Bill — a provision that would have sidelined the ELVIS Act. Blackburn first negotiated a compromise with Ted Cruz, then abandoned it and led the floor effort to strip the moratorium entirely; the Senate voted 99–1 to remove it in July 2025. She has since unveiled her own national AI policy framework, insisting federal law must protect creators and children before preempting the states.

Blackburn is no blanket AI opponent — she pitches AI investment for Tennessee in her gubernatorial run — but her legislative record is a sustained campaign against the industry’s freedom to clone, scrape, and preempt.