Denmark proposes giving people legal control over deepfakes of their face and voice

Denmark has proposed an amendment to its Copyright Act that would prohibit sharing realistic deepfakes of another person's face or voice without that person's consent. Culture Minister Zenia Stampe framed the bill as being about "securing the right to one's own body and voice." A secondary aim is to protect performing artists from having their work digitally imitated by AI and circulated without permission.

The bill prioritises obliging large platforms to take manipulated content down quickly. Caricature, parody, satire and criticism of power and society are exempted, but the exemption falls away where the imitation is misinformation that could seriously endanger others' rights or essential interests, or create a specific danger to life or property.

The reporting does not state penalties, enforcement mechanisms or a timeline for adoption, and the measure remains a proposal rather than enacted law.

Why it matters for digital humans: Denmark is attempting something structurally different from the disclosure-and-labelling approach most jurisdictions have taken. By routing likeness through copyright rather than through a new AI statute or a publicity-rights regime, it would give individuals a property-style claim and a familiar takedown pathway against platforms. For anyone building avatar or voice-clone products, the practical consequence is that consent provenance — who authorised this likeness, for what, and can you prove it — becomes an exportable compliance artefact rather than a nice-to-have. Worth tracking whether the satire carve-out survives drafting intact, since that boundary is where most enforcement fights will land. The bill is not law yet and the article gives no adoption timeline.