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EU AI Technology

Denmark To Tackle Deepfakes By Giving People Copyright To Their Own Features (theguardian.com) 42

Posted by BeauHD from the first-of-its-kind-laws dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: 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 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. It will also cover "realistic, digitally generated imitations" of an artist's performance without consent. Violation of the proposed rules could result in compensation for those affected. The government said the new rules would not affect parodies and satire, which would still be permitted. "Of course this is new ground we are breaking, and if the platforms are not complying with that, we are willing to take additional steps," said Engel-Schmidt.

He expressed hope that other European countries will follow suit and warned that "severe fines" will be imposed if tech platforms fail to comply.

Denmark To Tackle Deepfakes By Giving People Copyright To Their Own Features More | Reply

Denmark To Tackle Deepfakes By Giving People Copyright To Their Own Features

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  • And in other news: (Score:5, Funny)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Friday June 27, 2025 @11:40PM (#65481572) Homepage

    Rates of litigation between Danish identical twins have soared 1125%.

    • Re:And in other news: (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Friday June 27, 2025 @11:40PM (#65481574) Homepage

      (But seriously... this is an interesting move and I think a good one.)

      • Until people who got accidentally included in a video on the public street begin to sue.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dskoll ( 99328 )

          The devil is in the details. I'm sure it's possible to craft a law that doesn't penalize incidental and trivial appearance of someone in the background while prohibiting someone from making deepfakes that put the people in the foreground.

          Also, even now, any competent filmmaker gets subjects to sign a release if they appear prominently in their work.

        • Photographers have copyright over the photos they take. Since AI generated images are not photographs, this creates a situation where if you can prove you took a photo with a camera, you should be in the clear, as you then hold valid copyright.

      • Re:And in other news: (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Saturday June 28, 2025 @10:15AM (#65482180) Homepage

        The definition of "feature" is too nebulous to be useful. What kind of difference is sufficient to consider one person's feature as *different* from another person's feature? If I instruct AI to place a mole on the skin of the deepfake, will that be considered "different"? What if I change the skin tone a bit, or add a scar?

        On the other end of the spectrum, I could claim that an AI image that has nothing to do with me, violates my copyright because the face looks "similar" to mine.

        This law seems to be ripe for abuse and vulnerable to loopholes.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          This is already a fairly well developed area of law. The reason you don't get look-a-likes pretending to be famous people in ads and movies is that the law is pretty sensible - if the context is clearly to imply that it is that celebrity, only they didn't want to pay them, it's probably copyright infringement. There are of course exceptions for parody and the like.

          I imagine this law will be similar. If someone you know makes a deepfake of you, the law will consider that infringement because they know you, a

    • Rates of litigation between Danish identical twins have soared 1125%.

      God forbid this law hits the US. The sheer number of surgically-enhanced Kardashian clones would trigger a class-action within seconds.

      Ironically, there's a (snort) natural defense to that. Not even a Kardashian looks like a Kardashian anymore.

    • Not just identical twins. If you haven't found pictures of your doppelgangers online, it's only because they're not famous enough and haven't committed any crimes. With 8 billion people on the planet, statistics demand that a lot of them look enough alike that a casual observer wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

  • and will they let EULA give the rights away? (Score:3)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Friday June 27, 2025 @11:55PM (#65481582)

    and will they let EULA give the rights away?

    • Australian consumer protection laws override anything companies try to stick in their EULAs. I'm sure other countries like Denmark can figure out how to do the same.
  • This totally sounds like something that could NEVER backfire horribly, or create unwanted legal tension! /s

    Smarmy as I sound right now, this really does earnestly sound like a proposal that if not treaded carefully could create a lot of problems.

    • And those problems are?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dvice ( 6309704 )

        - Some people look identical. If one person wants to commercialize their looks and other doesn't, who wins?
        - If you make a copy of features, but change it a little, is it free game? How much you have to change?
        - Why should a person have copyright to their looks anyway? Why can't everything just be public domain.
        - What if you are a content creator and you makeup a random, but realistic look for human, but it ends up being copyrighted by someone. How can you even check it?
        - What if you create a digital person

        • So I took a picture of your face and created a virtual comedian and now I'm making 100 million a year on YouTube ... actually I got Jake Paul's face, and turned Him into a virtual comedian and I'm making 100 million a year on YouTube ...

          You don't find any problems with that?
          Should we make fraud legal? Isn't that what you're advocating by asking is everything should be public domain?

          Go one step further as poster below suggests. I put your face on images showing you being gang raped. Since this is a fantasy
          • The problem I have is that people don't realize that unlike snowflakes, people are not so unique that doppelgangers and identical twins aren't things (they are), that people can't look similar (and that this would open up litigation possibilities over people who look arbitrarily similar, in a similar vein to some of the IMO utterly moronic lawsuits over music similarities that have happened regarding melodies and the like. .

          • I think of this problem. I've been told by numerous, unrelated, people that I remind them of Jim Carey. Of course, I'm not Jim Carey. Now say I go on to make a comedian skit of myself doing silly things that look like something Carey may of done (he's very animated).

            Since Jim Carey already has the recognition, does this mean that he can sue me to take down my content because we look the same? Seems very unfair to me, who hasn't been discovered and just wanted to make a silly skit. At no time am I pretending

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by allo ( 1728082 )

        You draw some character. Some of the 8 billion people in the world look exactly the same, just because there is a finite number of how people can look, they are normal distributed (roughly) and the usual artists fantasy how to draw a person is also normal distributed with a similar mean. You are bound to draw someone who exists.

        Now your work gets popular and many millions see them. Calculate the odds the lookalike is one of them. Now some people are on the anti ai hype, so the person (or just some of the pe

    • Well, it's not like AI firms give a shit about copyright.....

      Although for the tension bit, stretching copyright to cover more crap "because AI" isn't going to solve the problem. It's an abuse of copyright to try and fix an issue of "you've let a bunch of dickheads hoover up all of your biometrics without consent." While I agree the issue needs to be corrected, promptly, the correct method would be to ban biometric collection without explicit written consent for the use, (if not banned already), and actual
      • Hit the button too soon....

        Another bit of tension: The proposed copyright changes puts the onus of enforcement on the individual. (Copyright is supposed to be enforced by the rightsholder.) Such as gathering initial evidence, filling a lawsuit, and seeking damages. It also means the damage has to be done before the victim can sue. I.e. They can know a deepfake is about to go up, but until it does, there's no evidence of infringement from which legal action can be justified. I'm sure the AI firms are more

        • (Copyright is supposed to be enforced by the rightsholder.)

          Not sure it changes the point of view it in the case of Denmark. European systems implement author's rights, not copyright. There initial ownership of an artistic work always lies with the individual, and some systems entirely prohibit corporate ownership. Of course usually authors (e.g. singers) delegate the economical rights of their creations to the company that hired them for that work.

  • If you punch someone in the noise - you get part of the copyrights. It's already both a work of nature and man!
  • I'm trying to figure out exactly how many pixels would need to align on what scales for this to apply at all. And it sounds like an after-the-fact consequence that won't prevent anything, just potentially overwhelm courts. People that don't know tech certainly shouldn't try to regulate tech.
  • So this also means any video/photo with me in the frame can get a takedown order, even the ones that are taken in public.

  • ...shouldn't it be given to their parents?

  • I can understand the reasons behind this, but what happens if two artists / singers sound very similar. Does one get to stop the other performing depending on who was born first (and therefore has their voice automatically copyrighted)?

    And I can imagine a whole host of other unintended consequences of such legislation if not drafted very carefully.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Yeah, it's tricky, and probably impossible to do correctly. But corporates have put so much extra power (international treaties!) in copyright law, that there's probably no other way that's nearly as effective. ...
      And perhaps this will rein in the excessive strength of copyright law.

  • Not the first law of its kind in Europe (Score:3)

    by Koen Lefever ( 2543028 ) on Saturday June 28, 2025 @06:09AM (#65481844)

    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.

    It is not the first law of its kind in Europe: several European countries (e.g. Belgium [wikipedia.org], The Netherlands [wikipedia.org]) have "portrait rights". It is separate from copyright, but it does the same thing as the new Danish legislation. Other countries also have personality rights [wikipedia.org].

    The problem remains enforcing this right, especially internationally (e.g. if the images are on servers in other countries on the other side of the globe).

  • Even with this law, It's a bit difficult to go after a handful of companies that weren't obeying copyright law in any of the other mediums. Such as the millions of books ingested by AI startups.

    I hope EU courts brings the hammer down on the shady AI companies. The US on the other hand has awarded one a DoD contract and is unlike to stop any of the questionable behavior of these tech companies (aka campaign donors)

  • presidential tubgirl deepfakes incoming

  • Isn't this in a nutshell giving every Danish citizen the same rights that Prince did uphold with his money?
    IIRC, Prince kept a hard control stance on his personal image.
    For example, when he came to a famous TV show in France, by contract he had a henchman in the security center of the studio, in order to take out the video tape from the security feeds after he had left the building.

    IMHO, I find this law is great and hope it will be reproduced by numerous countries.

  • Way ahead of them (Score:5, Funny)

    by dna_(c)(tm)(r) ( 618003 ) on Saturday June 28, 2025 @09:43AM (#65482126)
    Two decades ago, I chose a username...

  • If people don't have a government-granted monopoly on their features, they'll have no incentive to have any features at all.

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