Intellectual Property Basics Are Adapting to a New AI-Based World

OpinionAI

by Omri Keren LapidotJuly 25^th, 2025

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With recent legislation, Denmark may have kick-started a landslide, changing the very foundation of intellectual property. The Northern European country recently started an initiative to revise its intellectual property model, granting individuals copyrights for their likenesses. This will include their face, voice, and body features. This act is specifically aimed at deepfakes and AI-generated content that tries to exploit the reputation and credibility of select famous individuals for malicious purposes. However, this core change may ripple throughout the entire world of visual content.

Copyright and intellectual property regulations were established to encourage creatives to create by making them the owners of their intellectual and creative works. Worldwide, legal measures are in place to ensure that creators receive credit, symbolic recognition, and the financial rewards tied to their original work. But as creation changed, so did the corresponding legislation. The AI revolution confronts us, as well as lawmakers, with a quantum leap in terms of creation, unraveling the very fabric of reality-media relations.

Extreme measures?

The Danish legislators aim to provide us, the people, with tools to combat AI-generated deepfakes. Has anyone used our facial features, voice, etc., in generated content? We will be eligible to demand their removal. To me, this seems fair and logical. The immense power of AI generators can be easily used for malicious purposes, trashing one’s reputation, and even worse, using one’s reputation to spread disinformation and outright lies. While I generally agree on the necessity of such regulation, the precedent of granting the photographed subject a copyright claim may prove problematic.

Danish legislators aim to regulate AI-generated deepfakes and define a deepfake as a highly realistic digital representation of a person, encompassing both their appearance and voice. While this is a worthy target, regulatory precedents sometimes “leak”. The fact that a person appearing in a video could trigger a copyright claim has implications for our entire field, and without carefully defined regulatory boundaries, things could easily go wrong. Just imagine what subjects in an unflattering documentary could do with such power, especially in declining democracies or borderline authoritarian regimes.

On the safe side

The Danish government seems to be doing it right. The new law appears to limit coverage to “realistic, digitally-generated imitations.” The Danish culture minister, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, told the Guardian: “In the bill we agree and are sending an unequivocal message that everybody has the right to their own body, their voice and their facial features.” This statement seems to encompass a dangerously wide range of audio-visual content. However, Engel-Schmidt continues: “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.” I do hope that the legislation will limit itself to combating malicious AI-generated content. This will require caution and patience that are sometimes rather scarce in politics, as well as in the field of AI.

A good change

The tech industry is somewhat based on the ethos of “move fast and break things“. It operates in the limbo created by the time it takes other checks and balances to catch up. Such is the massive use of copyrighted content in the creation of the huge databases AI algorithms rely on, to name one example. Denmark seems to understand the dangers of realistically generated imitations, using the reputation of celebrities and public figures maliciously. This is an important move. Not only to counter the flood of AI slop, but also to ensure everyone has the right to maintain control over the use of their image, voice, and physical features. It does, however, hold potential for even more significant, profound changes to the very way mass media and the visual arts operate.

Hopes vs reality (vs virtuality)

Many mass-media-related revolutions bear the hope of democratization. Ever since the invention of mechanized print, it seems as if more people will have access to knowledge, and their power over their lives, their agency, would strengthen. Such were the hopes with the rise of social media. And that may have been true, but in the long run, we all know how that turned out. The same concepts and hopes seem to hover over the AI revolution, though we, battle-scarred and experienced, aren’t as naive. The new Danish regulations seem to be in place, but we must maintain vigilance. Tech giants’ media moguls and others are always trying to exploit the tiniest legislative gaps. We should always keep our eyes on the ball.

What are your feelings about AI-generated content? Do you fear for the creative process? Disinformation? Or do you see it as an amazing opportunity? Let us know in the comments.