Likeness copyright bill in Denmark would restrict AI cloning

Denmark is moving to establish a legal framework that treats a person’s facial and vocal identity as protected intellectual property, a step that would curb unauthorized AI cloning if enacted. The proposal would grant every citizen full ownership of their likeness copyright, covering face, voice and body data, and would require consent before any digital replication or commercial use.

The Ministry of Culture said the measure is intended to protect citizens from digital impersonation and misuse in AI-generated media as deepfakes make synthetic content harder to distinguish from reality. Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt stated, “You have the right to your own body, your own voice, and your own facial features.” By classifying personal likeness as a creative work, the plan would enable takedowns of unauthorized clones and allow claims for compensation when likeness copyright is violated, with limited exceptions for parody and satire.

The approach reframes the response to deepfakes from a reliance on privacy or defamation law to an intellectual property regime anchored in likeness copyright. That shift could set a benchmark for jurisdictions seeking clearer remedies, and it would push platforms and model developers to adjust dataset sourcing, training pipelines and content moderation to document consent and provenance.

If adopted, the rules would ripple through the generative video and audio sector by making consent and provenance verification a routine requirement. Enterprise buyers are likely to favor providers that can verify likeness copyright permissions from data ingestion to output, which could raise compliance costs for smaller developers. The direction also points to expanding demand for consent management, watermarking and detection tools that track identity-based content across platforms.

For investors, the momentum behind likeness copyright highlights growing value in rights and provenance layers that sit alongside model development. Cross-border operators may need new licensing workflows and takedown processes as national regimes tighten around identity-based content. As enterprises scale synthetic media strategies, the signal is clear that future content operations will be built around explicit consent and auditable lineage rather than open scraping.