Deepfakes can ruin lives and livelihoods – would owning the ‘rights’ to our own faces and voices help?

Not that long ago, the term “deepfake” wasn’t in most people’s vocabularies. Now, it is not only commonplace, but is also the focus of intense legal scrutiny around the world. Known in legal documents as “digital replicas”, deepfakes are created by artificial intelligence (AI) to simulate the visual and vocal appearance of real people, living or dead. Unregulated, they can do a lot of damage, including financial fraud (already a problem in New Zealand), political disinformation, fake news, and the creation and dissemination of AI-generated pornography and child sexual abuse material. For professional performers and entertainers, the proliferation and increasing sophistication of deepfake technology could demolish their ability to control and derive income from their images and voices. And deepfakes might soon take away jobs: why employ a professional actor when a digital replica will do?