When OpenAI unveiled “Sky,” a ChatGPT voice assistant that sounded eerily like Scarlett Johansson, in May 2024, the actress was outraged. “In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own work, our own identities,” Johansson demanded clarity, expressing the need for “appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected.”

Johansson’s plea echoes the concerns raised by Samuel Warren and future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in an 1890 Harvard Law Review article, “The Right to Privacy,” amidst the “instantaneous” spread of newspaper photographs. Their work became the cornerstone of the U.S. privacy movement, but they couldn’t have predicted the technological advancements to come.