The Danish government is to clamp down on the creation and dissemination of AI-generated deepfakes by changing copyright law to ensure that everybody has the right to their own body, facial features and voice.
The Danish government said on Thursday it would strengthen protection against digital imitations of people’s identities with what it believes to be the first law of its kind in Europe.
Having secured broad cross-party agreement, the department of culture plans to submit a proposal to amend the current law for consultation before the summer recess and then submit the amendment in the autumn.
It defines a deepfake as a very realistic digital representation of a person, including their appearance and voice.
The Danish culture minister, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, said he hoped the bill before parliament would send an “unequivocal message” that everybody had the right to the way they looked and sounded.
He told the Guardian: “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.”
He added: “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 move, which is believed to have the backing of nine in 10 MPs, comes amid rapidly developing AI technology that has made it easier than ever to create a convincing fake image, video or sound to mimic the features of another person.
The changes to Danish copyright law will, once approved, theoretically give people in Denmark the right to demand that online platforms remove such content if it is shared without consent.
The “news broadcasters” appear stunningly real, but they are AI-generated deepfakes in first-of-their-kind propaganda videos that a research report published Tuesday attributed to Chinese state-aligned actors. The fake anchors — for a fictious news outlet called Wolf News — were created by artificial intelligence software and appeared in footage on social media that seemed to […]
‘Facing reality? Law enforcement and the challenge of deepfakes’ is the first report produced through the Observatory function of the Europol Innovation Lab. The Europol Innovation Lab’s Observatory function monitors technological developments that are relevant for law enforcement and reports on the risks, threats and opportunities of these emerging technologies. The report provides a detailed overview of the criminal use...