Denmark to give citizens copyright protections over their own image and voice to combat AI-deepfakes

Legal code getting a face lift.

Denmark is expected to pass legislation granting citizens copyright protections over their own image and voice to combat the rise of artificial intelligence-created deepfakes, according to a report.

A broad cross-party swath of Danish parliamentarians passed an amendment to current copyright law Thursday that strengthened protections against deepfakes which it defines as hyper-realistic representations of an individual’s appearance and voice, The Guardian reported.

“In the bill we agree and are sending an unequivocal message that everybody has the right to their own body, their own voice and their own facial features, which is apparently not how the current law is protecting people against generative AI,” Denmark’s culture minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt told the outlet.

“Human beings can be run through the digital copy machine and be misused for all sorts of purposes and I’m not willing to accept that,” the culture minister added.

The legal move is meant to give Danes legal standing to demand that online platforms remove AI-generated content that depicts them without their consent.

The law will also cover “realistic, digitally generated imitations” of any individual artist’s performance.

However, the new rules will still have a conceptual carve-out for parodies and satire, governmental officials told the outlet.

Tech platforms that don’t abide by the new law will be subject to “severe fines,” officials said.

The law is expected to go into effect in the fall.