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In 2021, Danish video game live-streamer Mary Watson received an image of herself from an unknown person Instagram Account.
She immediately recognized the vacation photo from her Instagram account, but something was different: Her clothes had been digitally removed to show her naked. It was a deepfake.
“It overwhelmed me,” Watson recalled. “I burst into tears, because suddenly, there I was, naked.”
In the four years since their experience, deepfakes – highly realistic artificial intelligence-generated images, video or audio of real people or events – have become not only easier to create around the world, but also increasingly more realistic in look or sound. This is thanks to technological advancements and the proliferation of generative AI tools, including OpenAI and Google’s video generation tools.
These tools give millions of users the ability to easily push out content with nefarious purposes, ranging from impersonating celebrities Taylor Swift and Katy Perry to disrupting elections and insulting teenagers and women.
Copyright law
In response, Denmark seeks to protect ordinary Danes as well as artists and performers whose appearance or voice may be copied and shared without permission. A bill that is expected to be passed early next year would change copyright law by banning the sharing of deepfakes to protect citizens’ personal characteristics – such as their appearance or voice – from being copied and shared online without their consent.
If enacted, Danish citizens would gain a copyright on their likeness. In theory, they would then be able to demand that online platforms remove content shared without their permission. The law would still allow parody and satire, although it is unclear how this will be determined.
Experts and officials say the Danish law would be one of the most comprehensive steps ever taken by a government to combat misinformation via deepfakes.
Henry Ajder, founder of consulting firm Latent Space Advisory and a leading expert on generative AI, said he applauds the Danish government for recognizing that a change in the law is needed.
“Because right now, when people say ‘What can I do to protect myself from being deepfaked?’ Most of the time the answer I have to give is: ‘There’s not much you can do,'” he said, “without me basically saying, ‘Remove yourself from the Internet completely.’ Which isn’t really possible.”
He added: “We can’t just pretend it’s business as usual for how we think about those core parts of our identity and our dignity.”
Deepfakes and misinformation
us President donald trump Bipartisan legislation signed in May that makes it illegal to knowingly publish or threaten to publish intimate images, including deepfakes, of a person without their consent. Last year, South Korea took measures to curb deepfake porn, including tougher penalties and tighter regulations for social media platforms.
Danish Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt said the bill had broad support from lawmakers CopenhagenBecause such digital manipulation can create doubts about reality and spread misinformation.
“If you’re able to deepfake a politician without taking that product down, it will undermine our democracy,” he told reporters during an AI and copyright conference in September.
perfect balance
The law will only apply in Denmark, and is unlikely to include fines or imprisonment for social media users. But big tech platforms that fail to remove deepfakes could face serious fines, Engel-Schmidt said.
For example, Agder said that Google-owned YouTube has “a very, very good system for striking a balance between copyright protection and freedom of creativity.”
The platform’s efforts show that it “recognizes the scale of the challenge that already exists and how deep it is going to deepen,” he said.
crampsTikTok and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, did not respond to requests for comment.
Engel-Schmidt said Denmark, the current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, had received interest in its proposed legislation from several other EU members, including France and Ireland.
Intellectual property lawyer Jacob Plessner Mathiasen said the law reflects a broader need to tackle the online threat that has now permeated every aspect of Danish life.
“I think it certainly says that the ministry would not have created this bill if there was no opportunity for it to happen,” he said. “We’re seeing it with fake news, with government elections. We’re seeing it with pornography, and we’re seeing it with famous people and even ordinary people — like you and me.”
The Danish Rights Alliance, which protects the rights of creative industries on the Internet, supports the bill, as its director says current copyright law does not go far enough.
For example, Danish voice actor David Bateson suffered losses when AI voice clones were shared by thousands of users online. Bateson voiced a character in the popular “Hitman” video game as well as English commercials for the Danish toy manufacturer Lego.
“When we reported it on online platforms, they said ‘Okay, but what regulation are you referring to?'” said Maria Fredenslund, a lawyer and director of the coalition. “We couldn’t point to the exact regulation in Denmark.”
‘When it’s online, your work is done’
Watson had heard about fellow influencers who found digitally altered images of themselves online, but she never thought it could happen to her.
Delving into the depths of a dark side of the web, where faceless users sell and share deepfake imagery – often of women – she said she was shocked by how easy it was to create such images using readily available online tools.
“You can literally Google ‘deepfake generator’ or ‘how to make a deepfake’ and all these websites and generators will come up,” said Watson, 28.
He is happy that his government is taking action, but he is not hopeful. He believes that more pressure should be put on social media platforms.
“It shouldn’t be like this that you can upload pictures like this,” he said. “When it’s online, you’re done. There’s nothing you can do, it’s out of your control.”
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Stephanie Dazio in Berlin, Kelvin Chan in London and Barbara Ortutte in San Francisco contributed to this report.