Source: CiTiP blog (KU Leuven - Law)

Deepfakes are synthetic images, audio, or videos produced via deep learning, and Denmark and the Netherlands have proposed using copyright and related rights to give individuals stronger control over the unauthorised digital reproduction of their likeness. Copyright may be implicated at both input and output stages of deepfake creation: using pre-existing copyright-protected works as training data or prompts may be potentially infringing, and outputs may infringe where they reproduce protected original expression without authorisation; outputs may also qualify for copyright if a human author exercises sufficient creative choices. Current copyright law typically does not grant property rights to the person whose image or voice is replicated, although some national systems (Netherlands, Belgium, Italy) recognise portrait rights within copyright frameworks.

The author contends that expanding copyright to cover individuals’ likenesses is unnecessary because personality rights, privacy and data protection law already function as external limits on copyright and can protect recognisable individuals or lookalikes. Deepfakes are already addressed by a fragmented but substantial set of legal bases at EU and national level, including criminal law, tort law, the AI Act, the Digital Services Act and the Gender-Based Violence Directive, so the core challenge is enforcement—rapid detection, removal and cross-border effectiveness—rather than lack of legal grounds. Territorial copyright protection conflicts with the borderless online dissemination of deepfakes, making national copyright regimes ill-suited for effective cross-border remedies and complicating applicable law. Extending copyright to grant exclusive property rights in a person’s likeness would be hard to reconcile with copyright’s foundational aims of protecting original human expression and rewarding creative effort, and could perversely create licensing incentives that legitimise harmful conduct. The post recommends prioritising faster detection and takedown mechanisms, enhanced cross-border cooperation, and harmonisation of personality rights at EU level as more effective responses than a copyright expansion.