Heads of state and politicians around the world are promoting measures to protect themselves from deepfakes created with artificial intelligence. Some promote regulations that cover all officials in their respective countries. Others limit themselves to applying measures to prevent their voices from being cloned. These provisions come into effect at the same time that it has emerged that at least 46 female deputies of the European Parliament, one in six, have appeared in hyperrealistic but false pornographic images of pornography created with artificial intelligence, according to an investigation by the organization Agora Digitale Transformation, presented on Monday in the European Parliament. An “intolerable and deplorable” situation, has denounced the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, who has urged the member states to guarantee the effective application of the new European rules, to act against the applications that allow the creation of this type of content and to pursue the dissemination of non-consensual sexual deepfakes.
In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has requested to register her voice as a trademark with the European Union with the aim of defending herself against montages made with artificial intelligence. As reported this Monday by the newspaper La Repubblica, the far-right has filed her voice and the inflections of her timbre with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) with a four-second recording in which she pronounces the phrase Io sono Giorgia Meloni (I am Giorgia Meloni) twice. The request is still in the review phase, but if accepted, Meloni will have new legal tools to prevent the circulation of false content, such as demanding the removal of any illicit material and subsequently claiming compensation for damages.
Elena Gil, an expert lawyer in AI and founder of Data Guardians, warns that registering your voice does not offer absolute coverage against the generation of fake videos: “It is true that the trademark can help certain commercial uses, but since the protection is given for the products or services for which you have registered it, it is not for any deepfake,” she explains.
Although Meloni has opted for an individual protection tool, in Mexico, on the other hand, the Government works on a much broader measure that not only protects the president, Claudia Sheinbaum. The full Senate approved last Wednesday, by 72 votes in favor and 34 against, a reform to penalize the use of fake videos in which government officials appear. The modification, which still must be approved by the Chamber of Deputies, has been dubbed the “anti-meme law” and has drawn harsh criticism from the opposition. The parliamentarians accused the Sheinbaum administration of creating an instrument to censor satire and parody, by reforming the Federal Law for the Protection of Industrial Property and the federal Penal Code.
Given the commotion generated, the head of state herself has tried to contain the controversy. "What is sanctioned? That the president appears in a video using artificial intelligence to commit fraud. That is what appears in the law, that crimes cannot be committed. Not political satire, not even personal offense," he explained in the morning conference last Thursday. The legal advisor of the Federal Executive, Luisa María Alcalde Luján, explained that the approved text contemplates a sentence of five years in prison and a fine of up to 1,173,000 Mexican pesos (about 58,000 euros).
For digital law expert lawyer Borja Adsuara, measures such as those promoted by Claudia Sheinbaum or Giorgia Meloni are not necessary in Spain, where the early elections have left on hold for the moment the reform that sought to prohibit for the first time fake videos generated without the consent of the affected person. In his opinion, deepfakes should not be regulated as a specific category, as the Government of Pedro Sánchez intended to do before the dissolution of the Cortes with a new law. "A new right to one's own image should not be created in the digital environment. The Constitution already protects us in its article 18, we are protected by the civil protection law, the criminal code and the data protection law. The image and voice are personal data," he insists in a telephone conversation while remembering that the Spanish Data Protection Agency has already opened sanctioning files for using a person's image and voice without their consent.
Adsuara proposes as an alternative that, in any case, aggravating factors be introduced to crimes that are already legislated and gives as an example the scams that are committed using generated or manipulated videos. "Instead of putting deepfake, you can put real or realistic images. With that terminology, it doesn't matter if they were created with artificial intelligence or Photoshop. We don't have to make a legal reform every time we find ourselves faced with an emerging technology," he says.
Elena Gil, the popularizer and lawyer expert in AI, partially agrees with Adsuara, although she affirms that specific regulations will help provide greater clarity. “A law that expressly mentions that images manipulated without consent are penalized may help provide more legal certainty, but that does not mean that protection currently does not exist,” he indicates.
The response of governments to protect their authorities or their citizens from the dangers of artificial intelligence varies from country to country. Gil highlights the case of Denmark. "They have approved a law that gives citizens rights over their own digital identity, voice, face or body. This is to prevent them from being used for AI training. The regulations even allow them to request compensation. As an exception, satire or parody with photographs or videos created by AI is allowed, because not every image generated implies that we have crossed the threshold of what is illegal," he points out.
