Baker McKenzie partners, Adam Aft and Cynthia Cole, were featured in the World IP Review article, "U.S. Copyright Office Urges New Law to Tackle ‘Serious Threat’ From Deepfakes."
Deepfakes and digital replicas, which are digitally created or manipulated videos, images or audio recordings that appear real, but that falsely depict an individual, pose a broad range of actual or potential harms to public figures and private citizens alike. With these concerns in mind, the U.S. Copyright Office recently issued, "Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Part 1: Digital Replicas, "which provides a comprehensive overview on the threat posed by deepfakes.
Deepfakes have proliferated with the advent of AI. According to Adam, digital replicas will continue to be some of the most visible outputs of AI and will have a wide-ranging impact on AI and privacy issues. In fact, it is the speed and scale at which AI can produce and disseminate deepfakes, that led the report to conclude that federal legislation is necessary to address the issues in a broad and consistent manner.
Cynthia agreed with the report that current IP laws and privacy regulations are insufficient at containing the harm that deepfakes present to ordinary people, but thinks that "it is unlikely that we will have federal legislation on this issue this year or next."
There are, however, two new congressional proposals, the No Artificial Intelligence Fake Replicas and Unauthorised Duplications (No AI FRAUD) Act and the Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act, that offer potential for federal regulation around digital replicas to materialize.
Read the full article here (subscription required).