Denmark Aims to Use Copyright Law to Protect People From Deepfakes

The government in Denmark wants to protect citizens from deepfake images by giving them more control over their own likenesses, expanding copyright law in a pioneering measure that would allow people to demand that social media platforms take down digital forgeries.

Deepfake technology, which uses A.I. tools to create ultrarealistic images, videos or audio that appear to be actual people, is rapidly improving, leaving the images much harder to spot than ever.

Authorities in the United States and around the world are quickly imposing new rules in a struggle to catch up with the technology, which has legitimate uses but has also been widely adopted to make nonconsensual pornography, to run scams and to spread disinformation.

Existing laws are largely intended to crack down on the harms caused by the technology, typically by using the criminal code. The Danish bill would take a new tack, experts said, by amending copyright law to make it illegal to share most deepfake images of another person without their consent.

Jakob Engel-Schmidt, the Danish culture minister, said, “Technology has outpaced our current legislation.” The bill, he added, is an effort to “secure fundamental rights” as the digital age tests the boundaries of personal privacy.

There is also hope among the bill’s backers that it could be a test case for the rest of the European Union, the presidency of which Denmark has just assumed.