Denmark is set to introduce legislation on Thursday that would make it illegal to share realistic deepfakes of a person's face or voice without their explicit consent. The proposed amendment to the country's copyright law is designed to shield both ordinary citizens and artists from unauthorised digital imitations, including synthetic performances.
Deepfakes—images, videos, or audio generated or manipulated with artificial intelligence—can make people appear to say or do things they never did. While they are often used for satire or parody, they can also spread disinformation or humiliate the individuals depicted.
“With artificial intelligence, you can create manipulated videos and images with just a few clicks and share them on social media,” said Zenia Stampe, Denmark's culture minister, in a statement. “One of the main goals of the bill is to get the tech giants to take down manipulated content quickly, so that it causes the least possible harm.”
The bill follows a broad political agreement reached in June 2025 by then-culture minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt under the previous government. That agreement aimed to protect people against unauthorised digital imitations, and the new legislation now turns those commitments into concrete legal measures.
Exceptions for satire and criticism
The proposal includes carve-outs for satire, parody, caricature, and criticism of power and society. However, these exceptions would not apply if the content constitutes misinformation that poses serious dangers to others' rights, essential interests, life, or property.
Stampe hopes the law will come into force at the start of 2027. Denmark's move comes as governments across Europe and beyond grapple with the rapid rise of AI-generated content.
Within the European Union, member states are bound by the bloc's directive on violence against women, which must be implemented by 14 June 2027. That directive requires countries to criminalise the creation of sexually explicit manipulated material and its subsequent public distribution without the depicted person's consent, where this is likely to cause serious harm. Denmark, however, is not bound by this directive because of its opt-out from EU justice and home affairs rules.
France has already taken a stricter approach, prohibiting the sharing of AI-generated images or audio depicting someone without their consent when the artificial nature of the content is not obvious or expressly disclosed. Separate French rules also ban the sharing of sexual deepfakes without consent, regardless of labelling.
The Danish bill is part of a broader European conversation about the ethics and regulation of synthetic media. Earlier this year, Austrian MEP Lena Schilling spoke out after nude deepfakes of her surfaced online, highlighting the personal toll such content can take. Meanwhile, the UK's largest AI supercomputer faces grid delays until the 2030s, underscoring the infrastructure challenges that accompany AI development.
Legal experts note that Denmark's approach—anchoring deepfake protection in copyright law—is innovative but may face implementation hurdles. “Copyright law traditionally protects creative works, not personal likenesses,” said one Copenhagen-based intellectual property lawyer. “Extending it to cover faces and voices is a significant step, but it will require courts to interpret the law in ways that may not have been anticipated.”
The bill now moves to the Danish parliament, where it is expected to receive broad cross-party support. If passed, Denmark will join a small but growing group of European countries with explicit legal safeguards against the misuse of AI-generated imagery and audio.
