Did you know that, in the UK, you currently do not own a right to your digital self?
Unlike the human rights we have for our physical bodies, there is no specific legal protection for your image and voice when they are replicated in digital form. These are known as ‘personality rights’.
This article is going to tell you a little bit about what personality rights are, and what difference they could make to UK musicians, particularly considering artificial intelligence and deepfakes.
What are personality rights?
Personality rights are essentially rights in your image, likeness, face, and voice. In some countries it can also include things such as your name, vocal style and technique, silhouette, mannerism, caricature, and signature.
Personality rights already exist in other countries around the world, although they vary in what they cover and who they protect. In Guernsey, for example, it is a registered right that can protect voice, likeness, appearance, silhouette, face and mannerisms. Other countries that currently have some form of personality rights include the US, France, Germany, India, China and South Africa.
Personality rights can be used to protect against the unauthorised use of your image or voice. For example, in India, a Bollywood singer, Arijit Singh, successfully sued Codible Ventures for the unauthorised cloning of his voice. Codible Ventures also used Singh’s likeness in its advertising, misrepresenting his performance at its virtual event, and created various assets bearing his name and likeness without authorisation.
The Bombay High Court recognised the protection of Singh’s name, voice, vocal style and technique, mannerism, image, caricature, likeness and signature. Since the defendants were ordered to remove and block access to all infringing content, this was the first success for enforcing personality rights against unauthorised voice cloning in India.
Why don’t we have personality rights in the UK?
Before the age of deepfakes and artificial intelligence there were other laws in the UK that could help someone protect their image in certain specific circumstances. For example, when retail shop TopShop printed a t-shirt with Rhianna’s face on it, she successfully sued them using a common law remedy called passing off. She was able to do that because it seemed to the consumer that the t-shirt might have been sponsored or affiliated merchandise, when it was not.
Likewise, other laws such as copyright enable the control and remuneration from your creative outputs. However, the development of artificial intelligence technologies, and in particular the widespread use of unauthorised deepfakes, is not something that copyright is able to adequately address.
One reason for this is that copyright only protects your creative expressions, and not, for example, your image or the sound of your voice.
A sound recording of your voice only protects the actual specific recording and not your voice in general.
A famous High Court Judge, Mr Justice Laddie, once said about the UK: “On the whole, we do not respect rights of personality.” At that time, personality rights were seen to be ‘celebrity rights’ used to control the exploitation of image for profit, fundamentally different from human rights that protects things such as respect for private and family life.
Now, however, the distinction between human rights and protecting your own digital image, celebrity or not, has been removed by artificial intelligence and deepfakes.
Why do we need personality rights in the UK now?
Deepfakes and digital replicas are synthetic media that use artificial intelligence technology to essentially replace, manipulate or modify a person’s voice or image.
In the creative industries there are concerns of performers having their voice and image replicated without their permission, resulting in work lost to AI substitutes, not to mention the violation of having your image and voice taken and used without your consent.
Deepfake songs have been generated using the voice of artists, such as a song mimicking Drake and The Weeknd, without their knowledge or permission. AI generated songs can use voice cloning to replicate your voice without your permission, this is what happened to Murphy Campbell, a folk singer-songwriter. Murphy has spoken about her experience after someone had taken performances she posted to YouTube, created AI covers, and uploaded them to streaming platforms under her name. “I became a pest” she said, after relentlessly trying to get the songs taken down. Many were, but at least one can still be found on Spotify, just under a different artist profile, but with the same name.
Without personality rights there are no clear boundaries around the taking of your image or voice without your permission.
What difference would personality rights make to UK musicians?
Unauthorised deepfakes don’t just threaten creative workers, they can also cause harm by spreading disinformation and fraud, as well as afflicting violence against women and girls.
The theme that runs through all these problems is consent. Unauthorised deepfakes are made without the consent of the musician or victim. This causes harm to the individual, for example, victims have reported feeling violated, suffering from anxiety and feeling that their bodily autonomy has been compromised. It also harms society as a whole by eroding consent and autonomy in the digital world.
Having a right to your image and voice would mean that deepfakes and AI generated songs using voice cloning would require your permission.
That said, it’s important to remember that these rights need to be balanced with other rights, and so should the Government decide to implement personality rights in the UK, they will likely have some limitations and exceptions to protect things such as freedom of expression.
Likewise, it is also worth mentioning that although personality rights will provide extra protection, it is not the only thing required to address the issues of unauthorised deepfakes.
Overall, in my research, I have found that whilst some UK regulation may apply to deepfakes in specific circumstances, there are no laws that properly protect creators, musicians, and the general public from digital replicas. Deepfakes cause serious harm and concern for musicians, creators and the general public.
That is why, in my view, it is time to consider adopting personality rights in the UK as a means to establish protection of our image and voice in the age of AI.
The UK Government has announced that they will conduct an inquiry into whether personality rights should be provided under UK law, so keep an eye out for that consultation where you can share your views.
Find out how the MU is also fighting for publicity, personality and personal data rights, to make sure you decide what happens to your voice and image