Ohio Persona Rights and Deepfake Bill (HB 185)

Properties

kind: law
target: voice-and-likeness
jurisdiction: US, Ohio
mechanism: Amends Ohio's existing persona/right-of-publicity statute and adds new deepfake-recording prohibitions. Per the Ohio House's own bill title, the act 'amends sections of the Revised Code to make changes to the law relating to the unauthorized use of an individual's persona and to prohibit certain unauthorized deepfake recordings.' Secondary reporting (not independently confirmed against enrolled text) describes the bill as removing the prior requirement that a persona have commercial value before a claim can arise, and as amended in the House Technology and Innovation Committee in May 2026 to narrow liability to those who knowingly share a deepfake they know to be false, while treating internet providers as distribution channels rather than producers.
status: committee
owns: Distinct from tn-elvis-act and mt-name-voice-likeness-property-act by amending a pre-existing Ohio persona statute to drop its commercial-value gate rather than creating a new property or publicity right from scratch, and by pairing that change with a separate deepfake-recording prohibition rather than a developer/distributor liability standard.
source: Ohio House of Representatives, House Bill 185 (136th General Assembly) legislation page
notes: Sponsored by Reps. Adam Mathews and Ty D. Mathews. Status per the official ohiohouse.gov page is 'In House Committee' (House Technology and Innovation Committee); a committee hearing and amendments were reported in local press in May 2026, with no confirmed further action found within the 2026-08-05 to 2026-08-19 window. Penalty grading, the 'reasonable trier of fact' deception standard, and specific felony/civil-penalty figures reported by some secondary sources could not be confirmed against primary bill text in this pass and are deliberately omitted per the no-policy rule; only the confirmed title language is quoted.

Provenance

Source: https://ohiohouse.gov/legislation/136/hb185

Properties

kind

law

target

voice-and-likeness

jurisdiction

US, Ohio

mechanism

Amends Ohio's existing persona/right-of-publicity statute and adds new deepfake-recording prohibitions. Per the Ohio House's own bill title, the act 'amends sections of the Revised Code to make changes to the law relating to the unauthorized use of an individual's persona and to prohibit certain unauthorized deepfake recordings.' Secondary reporting (not independently confirmed against enrolled text) describes the bill as removing the prior requirement that a persona have commercial value before a claim can arise, and as amended in the House Technology and Innovation Committee in May 2026 to narrow liability to those who knowingly share a deepfake they know to be false, while treating internet providers as distribution channels rather than producers.

status

committee

owns

Distinct from tn-elvis-act and mt-name-voice-likeness-property-act by amending a pre-existing Ohio persona statute to drop its commercial-value gate rather than creating a new property or publicity right from scratch, and by pairing that change with a separate deepfake-recording prohibition rather than a developer/distributor liability standard.

source

Ohio House of Representatives, House Bill 185 (136th General Assembly) legislation page

notes

Sponsored by Reps. Adam Mathews and Ty D. Mathews. Status per the official ohiohouse.gov page is 'In House Committee' (House Technology and Innovation Committee); a committee hearing and amendments were reported in local press in May 2026, with no confirmed further action found within the 2026-08-05 to 2026-08-19 window. Penalty grading, the 'reasonable trier of fact' deception standard, and specific felony/civil-penalty figures reported by some secondary sources could not be confirmed against primary bill text in this pass and are deliberately omitted per the no-policy rule; only the confirmed title language is quoted.