On July 7, the Ministry of Culture sent a bill for public consultation with a deadline of August 21, 2025. The Ministry states that the bill is expected to enter into force on March 31, 2026. As of 25 September 2025, a bill has not been formally tabled before the Danish Parliament, although its introduction appears imminent.
The bill is a result of a broad political agreement, as the government and a number of other parties have agreed to establish protection against the misuse of other people's personal characteristics as well as imitation protection for performers.
During the Danish EU presidency, the Minister for Culture will according to a press release from the Ministry of Culture work to introduce similar protection of personal identifiers at EU level.
The background to the bill is that the possibilities for creating realistic content, using, for example, artificial intelligence, including the manipulation of existing video, audio and image content, have become so numerous that it will soon be impossible to distinguish between genuine and manipulated content. This can lead to fundamental doubts and perhaps even misconceptions about what constitutes genuine depictions of reality, and at worst, imitations can become a real democratic problem.
Performers are expected to be hit hard, as technology makes it easy for most people to copy and use artists' personal characteristics, including voice and appearance, in manipulated renditions of their performances.
While deepfakes are defined in the AI Regulation as AI-generated or manipulated image, audio or video content, the Danish bill has a broader definition, as it includes realistic digitally generated imitations, i.e. anything generated by the use of technological means. Thus, a new provision, section 73a, is proposed in the Copyright Act providing that realistic digitally generated imitations of the personal, physical characteristics of a natural person may not be made available to the general public without the consent of the person imitated. Protection is granted for 50 years after the death of the impersonated person. Personal physical characteristics are those characteristics that characterize and are unique to the individual person, such as appearance, voice, movements, etc.
The proposed protection is however limited to realistic imitations. This means that the imitation must be likely to cause a risk of confusion with an actual representation of the imitated person, and that it will not, for example, cover digitally generated imitations of a natural person's personal characteristics, where the imitated person is presented as a fantasy creature. Emphasis is therefore placed on whether the content appears as something that could have originated in reality, with a certain degree of probability, or whether it is completely obvious that it is an artificial representation. The risk of confusion does not apply when the imitation is clearly labelled as artificially generated or manipulated. Besides, protection does not cover imitations that are mainly expressions of caricature, satire, parody, pastiche, criticism of power, social criticism, etc. unless the imitation constitutes misinformation that could seriously jeopardize the rights or essential interests of others.
The new rules apply to physical persons, including foreign nationals and only concern making available to the public, not the making of copies.
In addition, another provision, section 65a, is proposed for the protection of imitation of the artistic performance of performers or artists with a duration of 50 years after the year of death of the performer or artist. The provision is an extension of the existing section 65 on performers' performances.
Until now, only authors benefited from protection from imitation.
The proposed provision entails protection of performers and artists against realistic digitally generated imitations that are made available to the public in the same way as under the proposed section 73a, including exceptions for parody etc.
Thus, it involves protection of the artist's or performer's voice, appearance and other physical, personal characteristics. For example, a digitally generated imitation of an author's book reading will be covered by the provision. However, imitations of performers or artists as private individuals not performing, e.g. a TV interview as a private person, will not be covered.
Finally, it is proposed that the existing provision, section 65, on performers' performance of literary and artistic works be expanded to include the making available to the public of an artist's artistic performance.
The performance must be "artistic", which clarifies that performances of a purely random nature, including sporting performances that are merely an expression of technically based choices in the performance situation and which do not have an artistic or aesthetic character, are not covered by the protection.
The proposed amendment provides protection for performances that are not works, such as non-human creations, including computer-generated creations, which are not considered works.
References:
- 7 July 2025 bill and consultation letter (in Danish):
https://hoeringsportalen.dk/Hearing/Details/70269
- 16 July 2025 press release from the Danish Ministry of Culture
on "The Minister of Culture wants to extend deepfake
legislation to the rest of Europe" (in Danish):
https://kum.dk/aktuelt/nyheder/kulturministeren-vil-udbrede-deepfake-lov-til-resten-af-europa
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