Can You “Copyright” a Person in the Age of Deepfakes?

Denmark may be on the brink of reshaping how the law protects individuals against deepfakes. A draft bill currently under consultation proposes to amend the Danish Copyright Act to introduce a new, specific protection for people whose likeness or performance is realistically reproduced using AI.

Until now, legal responses to deepfakes have been fragmented. The most harmful cases such as non-consensual pornographic deepfakes have usually been dealt with under criminal law, while commercial or reputational abuses have relied on personality rights and case law. This has left significant uncertainty around the scope and enforceability of protection. Denmark’s proposal would be the first in Europe to place deepfake protection directly into copyright legislation, aiming to create clearer and more predictable rules.

Importantly, the bill does not turn a person into a copyrighted work. Instead, it codifies personality-based protection in a familiar legal framework. The new right would apply to all natural persons, not only public figures, and would cover realistic, digitally generated imitations of a person’s physical characteristics or a performer’s artistic performance. The focus is on publication, not creation: making deepfakes publicly available without consent would be restricted, while private creation and AI tool providers fall outside the bill’s scope.

A key concept is realism. Protection applies where an AI-generated imitation is likely to be confused with the real person, especially where it risks misleading the public, harming reputation, infringing personal integrity, or free-riding on someone’s economic goodwill. This reflects broader concerns about misinformation, democratic discourse, and trust in digital media.

Freedom of expression remains central. The bill explicitly includes exceptions for caricature, satire, pastiche, and social or political criticism, and it must be interpreted in line with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In other words, political satire and obvious parody remain lawful so long as they do not seriously mislead or harm others.

The proposal also addresses post-mortem protection, granting rights until 50 years after death. This aims to balance respect for the deceased and their relatives against the need to avoid perpetual restrictions on speech and cultural use.

Overall, the Danish bill seeks to make enforcement against harmful deepfakes clearer and easier, filling gaps that currently sit outside criminal law. Whether it will keep pace with rapidly evolving AI technology remains to be seen but it marks a significant step in Europe’s legal response to deepfakes and digital identity.