Trademark Expansion as an Avenue to Protect Personal Identity Amidst the Rise of Deepfake Technology

Recent technological advances, often referred to as deepfakes, pose a new legal conundrum. How can individuals protect their identities online? A deepfake is a manufactured image, video, or audio file that appears to attribute words or acts to someone that has never acted in such a manner. Already this technology has been used to extort money and in attempts to spread false information and sway elections. As technology continues to improve, these deepfakes will only become increasingly more convincing. Traditional approaches to identity protection do not address all the various harms or the multi-jurisdictional nature of the harms that deepfakes present to individual citizens. This note suggests that a reconception of trademark law serves as one avenue to protect identity amidst rapid technological innovation. Recognizing that our identities are commodified now more than ever, posing identity as a source identifier of an individual would prevent scammers from co-opting another’s identity in a confusing way.