“We are abolishing Pentecost. We are abolishing Easter. And we are abolishing Christmas.”
This announcement Sounds from the mouth of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in a video that was distributed by the chairman of the Danish People’s Party Morten Messerschmidt in April last year. In a kind of press conference, in which her voice sounds rather robot -like, she announces the abolition of the holidays.
A sticker is visible at the top of the video, with the text ‘AI-generated’. The video, a so -called deepfake, is fake. With the help of artificial intelligence, Messerschmidt had made a fake film that is not easy to distinguish from real images. It led to enormous commotion in Denmark: one Danish politician after the other, Messerschmidts, convicted, and called for a ban on these kinds of videos. One of them was Minister of Culture Jakob Engel-Schmidt.
A little over a year later, Engel-Schmidt adds the deed to the word. “People can be taken by the digital copy machine and be abused for all kinds of purposes,” said the minister, “and I will not accept that.” With a bill in which all Danes get copyright on their bodies, face and their voice, the government wants to protect citizens. From now on Danes must give permission before a deep fake can be made. A few Dutch MPs have asked the government for investigating a similar law.
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What is a deepfake?
A deep fake is a manipulated video in which visual material is processed. With the help of AI, images are made that can hardly be distinguished from real. Usually a (familiar) person says or does things like this that have not really been said or happened.
The first deepfake appeared online in 2017. The number of deep fake videos has then increased rapidly, by 550 percent since 2019 according to an estimate by the US State or Deepfakes study.
About 95 percent of the cases are porn videos. According to figures from Offlimitsa center of expertise for online abuse, is in danger of becoming a record year for deepfake naakes images. Between January and April there were almost as many reports as in the whole of 2024.
Deepfakes are becoming increasingly realistic, now tech companies such as Google, OpenAi and Meta Billions Stitches in the development of AI. Systems are getting better in imitating human action and to produce lifelike videos is no longer necessary for much knowledge of programming.
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What is the chance that the law will be adopted by the Danish parliament?
The bill has very broad support: nine of the eleven games in the Danish Folketing Be behind it. The Danish People’s Party and the Liberal Alliance, which both distributed DeepFake videos of Prime Minister Frederiksen are against.
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What about the regulations in the Netherlands?
All in 2022 the Scientific Research and Data Center (WODC) came to the conclusion that Dutch law is pretty well equipped to tackle deepfakes. Although not all Deepfakes are punishable (porn deepfakes or deep nudes Are that on the basis of the Criminal Code), someone can often demand that the video is removed from him or her.
“There are a number of different roads with which Deepfakes can be combated,” said Dirk Visser, professor of Intellectual Property at Leiden University. “First of all, everyone has a portrait right, where your reasonable interest is weighed with the importance of the creator of the video.”
In addition, victims can rely on the General Data Protection Regulation (AVG). If a face can be recognized in a deepfake and it is distributed publicly, the maker processes personal data. “Then permission is required,” Visser explains. “If it is not given, you can ask the maker or the platform to remove the video.”
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What is the problem then?
The largest stumbling block is enforcement. Fulco Blokhuis, lawyer AI and Intellectual Property at BoekX Advocaten, states “that the police, the Ministry of Justice, the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets and the Media Authority do have the means to act, but does not have their priority.” Other experts agree Blokhuis.
Another problem lies with the voice of a person. The portrait right does not apply to this. The Supreme Court (the highest judge in the Netherlands) grabs the portrait right, and deep fakes are included, explains professor Visser. “The Picnic company once used a lookalike by Max Verstappen for an advertisement. That turned out to be covered by the portrait right of Verstappen. But it must be something visual.”
Blokhuis and Visser are therefore looking forward to a new law at Danish example. “Then the uncertainty of a weighing of interests is off and you must always have permission before you place something like that. It offers extra guarantee,” says Visser. VVD MP Rosemarijn Dral confirms NRC That she has been working on a similar bill for three -quarters of a year.
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