One of the most widely discussed risks associated with artificial intelligence is the rise of deepfake technology.
Deepfakes are AI-generated media designed to convincingly imitate real people. By training machine learning models on images, video, and audio recordings, these systems can generate synthetic content that appears strikingly authentic, often indistinguishable from reality to the average viewer.
While this technology has legitimate uses in entertainment, filmmaking, and digital media, it has also introduced a new category of risk. The ability to replicate and manipulate human identity at scale is no longer theoretical.
In recent years, deepfakes have already been used in fraud schemes. Criminals have leveraged AI-generated voices to impersonate executives or family members, placing phone calls that pressure victims into transferring money or sharing sensitive information. In other cases, fabricated videos have been used to spread misinformation, influence public opinion, or damage reputations.
However, one of the most troubling and rapidly growing areas of misuse involves non-consensual pornography.
Research conducted by Deeptrace Labs in 2019 estimated that approximately 96 percent of deepfake videos online were pornographic in nature, with the vast majority targeting women. More recent industry analyses continue to reflect similar patterns, suggesting that this is not an isolated issue but a persistent trend.
Many of the most visible victims of deepfake abuse are public figures. Scarlett Johansson, for example, has frequently been cited as one of the most commonly targeted individuals in deepfake pornography. Even deceased figures such as Marilyn Monroe have appeared in AI-generated content without consent, raising complex ethical questions about posthumous identity rights.
Yet focusing only on celebrities risks overlooking a more widespread and damaging reality.
For private individuals, the consequences of deepfake abuse can be even more severe. Cases involving non-celebrities are increasingly linked to harassment, bullying, and revenge-based attacks. Victims often face significant barriers to recourse, including the cost of legal action, the difficulty of removing content from the internet, and the speed at which manipulated media can spread.
Even when a deepfake is poorly produced, the damage can be real. The mere existence of fabricated content can lead to emotional distress, reputational harm, and long-term personal and professional consequences.
The scale of this problem is likely to grow.
As individuals accumulate larger digital footprints, the amount of publicly available data, including photos, videos, and voice recordings, continues to expand. Social media platforms alone host billions of images that can potentially be used to train AI systems. At the same time, the tools required to create deepfakes are becoming more accessible, requiring less technical expertise and less source material than ever before.
This evolution raises a critical question: should individuals have legal rights over the digital replication of their likeness?
Existing legal frameworks tend to rely on traditional concepts such as privacy rights, defamation law, or rights of publicity. However, these frameworks were not designed for a world in which a person’s identity can be synthetically recreated, modified, and distributed at scale without their knowledge or consent.
This is where the concept of Digital Persona Rights becomes increasingly relevant.
Digital Persona Rights extend identity protection into the AI era by recognizing that a person’s likeness, voice, and behavioral patterns are core elements of personal identity, and that these elements deserve clear legal ownership and control.
Without such protections, individuals may find themselves increasingly vulnerable to identity manipulation in digital environments where authenticity is harder to verify and misuse is easier to execute.
But deepfakes are only one part of a much larger issue.
Beyond synthetic media lies another growing concern. The vast and expanding ecosystem of personal data collection. From digital footprints to biometric identifiers, modern technologies are continuously capturing and storing information that can be used to model, predict, and replicate human behavior.
In the next post, we will explore how digital footprints, biometric surveillance, and large-scale data collection further complicate the question of Digital Persona Rights, and why control over personal data may be just as important as control over one’s likeness.
