Denmark Moves to Become a Global Pioneer in Criminalizing Malicious AI Deepfakes

COPENHAGEN: In 2021, Danish video game live-streamer Marie Watson received a direct message on Instagram from an unknown account. The image was a holiday snap she recognized from her own profile, but her clothing had been digitally stripped away, replaced by AI-generated nudity. It was her first, devastating encounter with a deepfake.

“It overwhelmed me so much,” Watson recalled. “I just started bursting out in tears, because suddenly, I was there naked. You feel so violated, yet completely powerless.”

In the four years since Watson’s ordeal, deepfakes—highly realistic, AI-generated media that fabricates events or a person’s likeness—have evolved from a niche concern to a pervasive global threat. Fueled by rapid advances in generative AI tools from companies like OpenAI and Google, creating convincing forgeries is now accessible to millions, with nefarious uses ranging from non-consensual intimate imagery of celebrities like Taylor Swift to sophisticated political disinformation campaigns and the bullying of private citizens.

In a pioneering response, Denmark is drafting legislation to arm its citizens with a new form of copyright over their own identity. A bill with broad parliamentary support, expected to pass in early 2025, would make it illegal to create or share a deepfake of a person without their explicit consent, aiming to protect their fundamental personal characteristics—their face, body, and voice—from digital exploitation.

A New Legal Frontier: Copyrighting the Self

The Danish approach is unique. Instead of creating a entirely new and complex legal category, it elegantly expands existing copyright law. The proposed amendment would grant individuals an inalienable copyright over their own likeness.

“If you’re able to deepfake a politician without her or him being able to have that product taken down, that will undermine our democracy,” Danish Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt told reporters at a recent AI and copyright conference. “We need to establish that your face, your voice, your body, belongs to you.”

In practice, this would give any Danish citizen a clear legal basis to demand that online platforms take down deepfake content. The law is designed to include safeguards for freedom of expression, explicitly allowing for parodies and satires, though the precise boundaries will likely be tested in the courts.

Henry Ajder, a leading generative AI expert and founder of Latent Space Advisory, applauds the move. “Because right now, when people say ‘what can I do to protect myself from being deepfaked?’ the answer I have to give most of the time is: ‘There isn’t a huge amount you can do,’” he said. “We can’t just pretend that this is business as usual for how we think about those key parts of our identity and our dignity.”

Global Context and Enforcement Challenges

Denmark’s initiative places it at the forefront of a global regulatory scramble. In the United States, a recently signed law makes sharing non-consensual intimate imagery, including deepfakes, a federal crime. South Korea has also implemented harsh penalties for deepfake pornography. However, Denmark’s law is broader, covering any unauthorized use of a person’s likeness that infringes on their personal rights, not just sexualized content.

Enforcement, however, presents a significant hurdle. The law would apply primarily within Denmark. While individual users sharing a deepfake might not face fines, the legislation targets major tech platforms, holding them accountable with the threat of severe financial penalties for failing to comply with takedown notices.

“The key will be whether platforms build the capacity and will to enforce this,” said Maria Fredenslund, director of the Danish Rights Alliance, which advocates for creative industries online. She points to the case of David Bateson, the iconic voice of Agent 47 in the “Hitman” video game series, who discovered his voice was being widely cloned without his permission.

“When we reported this to the online platforms, they said ‘OK, but which regulation are you referring to?’” Fredenslund explained. “We couldn’t point to an exact regulation in Denmark. This law changes that.”

Ajder notes that platforms like Google’s YouTube have sophisticated copyright systems, suggesting a framework exists for compliance. “It shows they recognize the scale of the challenge that is already here and how much deeper it’s going to become,” he said. Other platforms like TikTok, Twitch, and Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram) did not respond to requests for comment on the proposed Danish law.

A Widespread Problem Demanding a Solution

The political will in Denmark is strong, driven by a consensus that deepfakes threaten not only individual dignity but the very fabric of society.

“I think it definitely goes to say that the ministry wouldn’t make this bill if there hadn’t been any occasion for it,” said intellectual property lawyer Jakob Plesner Mathiasen. “We’re seeing it with fake news, with government elections. We are seeing it with pornography, and we’re also seeing it with famous people and also everyday people—like you and me.”

The Danish model has already attracted attention from other European Union members, including France and Ireland, as the bloc continues to grapple with the implementation of its landmark AI Act, which focuses more on regulating the AI systems themselves rather than the specific content they produce.

For Victims, A Cautious Hope

For Marie Watson, the legislation is a welcome step, but she remains cautious. After her own experience, she delved into the dark corners of the internet where such content is traded and was shocked by its accessibility.

“You could literally just search ‘deepfake generator’ on Google or ‘how to make a deepfake,’ and all these websites and generators would pop up,” the 28-year-old said.

While the law would give her a tool to fight back, she believes the ultimate responsibility lies with the platforms that host the content. “It shouldn’t be a thing that you can upload these types of pictures,” she said. “The damage is instant. When it’s online, you’re done. You can’t do anything; it’s out of your control.”

Denmark’s bold legal experiment will be closely watched around the world as a test case for whether national law can effectively curb a borderless digital menace, offering a potential blueprint for how to return a sense of ownership over one’s own identity in the age of AI.

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