In a move that might make Silicon Valley’s AI labs squirm just a little, Denmark is laying the groundwork for something revolutionary: giving regular people the legal rights to their own faces, voices, and bodies. That’s right—your smile, your voice pitch, your awkward TikTok posture—Denmark wants it legally off-limits to deepfakes and digital impersonators without your say-so.
It sounds like science fiction, but it’s not. The Danish government is proposing changes to its copyright laws that would treat a person’s likeness as intellectual property. Not just for celebrities, influencers, or public figures—but for everyone. Think of it like copyrighting your own identity. If some AI system scoops up your face and voice to churn out a fake video of you selling crypto or making a political speech you never gave, you’d actually be able to do something about it—legally.
Until now, the tools to fight that kind of digital impersonation have been clunky at best. Unless you’re famous or very rich (or both), it’s hard to stop someone—or something—from using your likeness in a convincing, AI-generated clone. Denmark wants to flip the script by giving every individual the legal ammo to go after the impersonators. It’s a legal first in Europe, and potentially a blueprint for how other countries might defend against the tidal wave of synthetic media that’s washing over the internet.
The idea, according to Denmark’s Minister of Culture, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, is to close the gap between traditional copyright law and the very not-traditional ways AI is now being used. He told local press that people should have control over their “own body, voice, and facial features,” because right now, copyright protections don’t go that far. You can copyright a song or a photo, but not your face—until now.
What makes this proposal even more intriguing is that it carves out room for satire and parody, so comedians and political impersonators won’t need to panic. But AI-generated fakes designed to mislead or deceive? Denmark wants to shut that down—hard. If the proposal becomes law, those responsible for creating or distributing malicious deepfakes could be hit with serious fines, and online platforms would have to respond fast or face penalties of their own.
This isn’t just about stopping trolls or scammers. It’s also a quiet but powerful rebuke of how tech companies have treated our data—and by extension, our identities—as raw material for whatever machine-learning model needs feeding next. Denmark, it seems, isn’t waiting for a tech apocalypse to act. It’s playing offense.
And while other countries, including the U.S., have started banning malicious deepfakes in piecemeal ways, Denmark is taking a more creative approach. By anchoring protections in copyright law, it’s giving individuals—not just corporations or governments—a stake in the fight over AI ethics and digital identity.
The bill will go into public consultation this summer, and if passed, could set off a ripple effect throughout Europe. It’s the kind of low-key revolution that might not grab headlines like a new AI chatbot launch, but make no mistake—if you care about who gets to be you online, Denmark’s plan might just be the most important AI story you haven’t heard about yet.
