Regulating deep fakes: Legal and ethical considerations

Abstract

The authors • Dr Edvinas Meskys is Attorney-at-law at Ellex Valiunas law firm (Vilnius) and the Head of the Legal Department for Teva Baltics (Lithuania). Aidas Liaudanskas, MEng (Cambridge), is Machine Learning Engineer at Fyusion, Inc. (San Francisco). Julija Kalpokiene, LLM (Nottingham), is Attorney-at-law assistant at Konsus (Kaunas). Dr Paulius Jurcys, LLM (Harvard), is founder of data privacy company Prifina (San Francisco), teaching fellow at Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society (CopyrightX) and member of the ILA Committee on IP and PIL. This article • Deep fakes have become a buzzword discussed widely among legal and technology experts. The term refers to face-swapping technologies that enable the quick creation of fake images or videos, which appear incredibly realistic. • This article explains the technologies behind the creation of deep fakes and discusses four categories of deep fakes (deep fake porn, deep fakes in political campaigns, deep fakes for commercial uses and creative deep fakes). The authors of this article address ethical and regulatory aspects of each of those four categories of deep fakes. Since the first deep fakes were used for malicious and socially detrimental purposes (eg revenge porn and political campaigns), the authors highlight that these deep fakes - like many other technologies in the past - initially are confronted with fear. • Since deep fakes are likely to be more widely adopted in the future, the authors highlight various social and legal challenges which the regulators and the society will have to face. The article also touches upon the potential role of online content dissemination platforms and governments in addressing deep fakes. The authors also offer three suggestionsone from a technology point of view and two from a regulatory angleon how to curtail the advancement of deep fakes.