Imagine discovering a video of yourself online promoting a product you have never used. The voice sounds like yours. The face is yours. Friends and colleagues believe it is genuine. Yet you never recorded the video, never gave permission for your likeness to be used and had no involvement in its creation.
Advances in generative AI mean this scenario is no longer hypothetical. Realistic digital replicas can now be created using publicly available photographs, video clips and voice recordings. Whilst some uses are harmless or clearly satirical, others raise more difficult questions about consent, control and the legal protection of personal identity.
As explored in AI, deepfakes and your image rights | Mills & Reeve, the UK currently provides a range of legal remedies that assist in certain circumstances when dealing with unauthorised digital replicas. What it does not provide is a standalone right allowing individuals to control the use of their image, voice or likeness. As policymakers and campaigners continue to debate whether that should change, developments overseas offer a useful insight into how other jurisdictions are responding to the same challenge.
Model one: Specific digital replica rights
Denmark
One of the most closely watched developments in Europe has come from Denmark. The Danish government has proposed amendments to the Copyright Act aimed at realistic digital imitations of individuals. This proposal has attracted attention because it moves beyond traditional legal frameworks.
The new laws would allow individuals to object to the public availability of realistic digitally generated imitations of their appearance or voice. With separate provisions addressing imitations of performers and performances.
The significance of the proposal lies in what it treats as the legal problem. Rather than focusing on consumer confusion, reputational damage or traditional copyright works, it focuses on the unauthorised creation and dissemination of a realistic digital imitation of an identifiable person.
The rights are intended to apply to all individuals, rather than only celebrities or performers. Safeguards for satire, parody, caricature and similar forms of expression, are included, recognising that any new right must coexist with freedom of speech and artistic freedom.
The European Commission has raised concerns about the proposals and how they fit within the harmonised copyright framework throughout Members States. For the UK though, Denmark raises an important possibility: that realistic digital replicas may justify legal protection in their own right.
United States
The United States has historically protected identity through state-level publicity rights. However, recent legislative proposals suggest a growing focus on digital replicas.
The proposed NO FAKES Act (short for the Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe Act) of 2026 would create a federal right relating to unauthorised digital replicas of a person's voice and visual likeness. Whilst the proposal has not yet become law, it provides an indication of the direction of travel.
The Act would apply to living and deceased individuals and is directed specifically at highly realistic, readily identifiable digital replicas. It would also establish notice and takedown procedures intended to help individuals secure removal of unauthorised content, whilst allowing users to challenge removals through counter notification mechanisms.
Importantly, the proposal does not depend upon proving false endorsement, privacy intrusion or ownership of an underlying copyright work. Instead, it treats control over a person's voice and visual likeness as the interest requiring protection.
Like the Danish proposal, the legislation attempts to balance identity protection with freedom of expression. Exceptions are proposed for activities such as news reporting, commentary, criticism, scholarship, parody and satire.
The NO FAKES Act illustrates another emerging trend: the development of digital-replica rights that sit alongside, rather than replace, traditional intellectual property and privacy laws.
California
California offers an example of legislation already in force. Recent laws addressing digital replicas of living performers and deceased personalities place significant emphasis on consent and contractual clarity. Their wider lesson is straightforward: permission to use someone's image or voice should not be assumed from broad contractual language drafted before AI-generated replicas became commonplace.
For UK policymakers, this raises important questions about what meaningful consent should look like in an AI-enabled environment and whether individuals should be able to authorise some uses of their likeness whilst withholding permission for others.
Model two: image rights and consent-based identity protection
France
French law has long recognised protections relating to image, identity and personal autonomy, giving individuals a more direct interest in controlling the use of their image than is available under UK law.
The French approach is particularly relevant because it highlights a distinction that is often overlooked in AI discussions: transparency is not the same as consent. A synthetic image or voice may be clearly labelled as artificial. The audience may understand that it was generated using AI. Yet the individual concerned may still never have agreed to the use of their identity.
France has also introduced legislation addressing certain forms of algorithmically generated audio and visual content, including separate protection against non-consensual sexual deepfakes. These developments demonstrate how traditional image rights and newer AI-specific measures can operate alongside one another.
Model three: General personality rights
Germany and Spain
Germany and Spain recognise broader personality-based protections. Germany's general right of personality is rooted in constitutional principles relating to human dignity and personal autonomy. Spain similarly protects honour, privacy and the right to one's own image through constitutional and statutory mechanisms.
The attraction of these systems is their flexibility. A right built around personal identity can potentially apply whether the disputed content involves a photograph, manipulated footage, voice cloning or a future technology that does not yet exist.
At the same time, broad rights inevitably require careful balancing. Courts must consider not only the interests of the individual but also journalism, artistic freedom, political expression and matters of public interest.
Germany and Spain demonstrate that AI-specific legislation is not the only possible response to protecting identity. A sufficiently broad and technologically neutral personality right may already be capable of addressing many of the issues generated by synthetic media.
What can the UK learn?
The comparative picture does not suggest that the UK should simply import another country's legal framework. Each jurisdiction reflects its own constitutional traditions, regulatory priorities and approach to freedom of expression. However, several common themes emerge.
What should be protected?
Modern synthetic media can replicate a person's voice, appearance, movements and performances. Any future UK reform would need to consider whether protection should extend beyond personal attributes like face and image, to other identifiable characteristics that contribute to a person's identity.
What type of consent should be required?
A recurring theme is the importance of consent. The question is not whether consent matters, but what counts as meaningful consent in an AI environment. Permission to use a photograph for one purpose does not necessarily imply permission to create unlimited AI-generated derivatives in future contexts.
As technologies become more sophisticated, the scope, duration and specificity of consent are likely to become increasingly important.
What exceptions are needed?
No jurisdiction examined has created an unrestricted right to control identity.
Freedom of expression remains a central consideration. Journalism, public-interest reporting, political commentary, satire, parody, artistic expression and historical documentation all require careful protection.
The challenge is therefore not simply creating a new right but instead define where its limits should lie.
How should rights be enforced?
Perhaps the most practical lesson concerns enforcement.
Traditional litigation can be slow, expensive and reactive. By the time a claim reaches court, digital content may already have been viewed, shared and reproduced thousands of times with the associated damage to reputation, dignity, privacy or livelihoods.
For many individuals, the ability to stop the spread of content quickly may be more valuable than obtaining monetary compensation months or years later. Several of the emerging models therefore place considerable emphasis on notice-and-removal mechanisms, platform procedures and early intervention to try to reduce harms.
Conclusion
The jurisdictions considered in this article illustrate different approaches to a common challenge – how do you give people more control over their personal attributes in a digital world?
Whether the answer lies in a new personality right, a more targeted digital-replica regime, or the adaptation of existing legal principles, remains open to debate. What is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, however, is the growing gap between the ease with which a person's image, voice and likeness can be reproduced and the legal mechanisms available to control those uses in the UK. That’s why our My Name My Face campaign was formed. Take a look, My Name, My Face - Campaign for UK personality rights legislation, consider adding your face to the supporter’s gallery and help us build momentum for change.
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