Copyrighting Your Face: The Promise and the Problems

What if your face, your voice, and your body were protected like a work of art? Denmark is close to making that real. The country is preparing to pass the first law in Europe granting citizens copyright over their likeness—putting legal power in the hands of individuals to control how they appear in AI-generated content.

In a proactive shift to stop misuse before it starts, the country of Denmark is giving people copyright over their likeness.

Overall, I like this direction. It’s proactive. It centers the person, not the platform. And it takes seriously the risks posed by deepfakes, impersonation, and digital identity theft. But enthusiasm for a good idea should never eclipse the need to look critically at how it will work. The law might be needed—but it won’t be easy.

What the Law Proposes

Here’s what Denmark’s legislation sets out to do:

• Give citizens automatic copyright over their face, voice, and bodily likeness.

• Require consent for any digital imitation—including AI-generated content.

• Mandate removal of deepfake content and penalize platforms that host it.

• Provide posthumous protections for up to 50 years.

• Allow carve-outs for satire and parody to preserve freedom of expression.

It’s a shift from punishing bad behavior after the fact to setting up rights that work to prevent it from happening in the first place.

Why It Matters

AI tools can now replicate your voice with a few seconds of audio, or animate your face saying things you never said. That’s no longer novel—it’s dangerous. From celebrity impersonations to political disinformation to everyday harassment, deepfakes are growing more convincing and more common. Current copyright and privacy laws simply weren’t built to handle this scale or speed.

Denmark’s move could help set a global precedent. But it also comes with real complications.

Where This Gets Complicated

1. Blurred Lines with Existing Rights

Traditionally, likeness rights fall under privacy or publicity laws—not copyright. Creating a new copyright layer adds legal complexity: where does privacy end and IP begin?

2. Free Speech and Fair Use

What about journalists? Or artists? Or comedians using satire? While the law allows for parody exemptions, those lines are notoriously blurry. Courts will be stuck debating intent—possibly at the expense of expression.

3. A Global Internet, Local Rules

Most platforms aren’t based in Denmark. That makes enforcement difficult and raises the question: how effective is a law with only partial accountability?

4. Who Owns What?

If a photographer captures your face, do you own the likeness—or do they own the photo? What happens when your copyrighted likeness appears in someone else’s copyrighted work?

5. Policing the Internet

This law demands monitoring, reporting, and removal systems that don’t yet exist at scale. Most people won’t have the time, tools, or resources to track misuse of their own image online.

6. AI Moves Faster Than Law

New platforms pop up every week. The tech is outpacing regulation, and loopholes will appear faster than courts can close them. What counts as “realistic”? What’s “transformative”? These aren’t binary questions.

Where I Land

Denmark’s proposal is a necessary experiment in a space that urgently needs rules. It’s imperfect, but it starts from the right place: people deserve control over their image, especially when AI can replicate it so easily.

Still, I’m mindful of the legal gray zones and practical hurdles. Supporting this direction means being honest about how hard it will be to implement. The law must evolve with the tech—and so must we.

Let's Keep the Conversation Going

Should likeness be copyrighted? Would you support a similar law? What would it take to balance individual rights and creative freedom in this space? We’re designing the future of digital identity in real time. Let’s make sure it’s human-first.