Deepfake: An Assessment From The Perspective Of Data Protection Rules

Introduction

Fake content is nothing new and has been there in the digital realm particularly after the introduction of photo-editing, image creation and graphic design software such as Adobe Photoshop in 1990. The number of them, however, has been alarmingly increasing within the last months. These contents are now very hard to be identified as fake thanks to the "Deepfake". Deepfake has been so far used to create, among others, malicious hoaxes, fake news as well as adult videos¹.

While these contents may interfere with a wide range of laws including the ones related with fraud, crime, and copyright, we will throughout this article try to lay out and focus on its interference with the data protection rules. As such, we do not claim or aim to address every possible aspect regarding the individuals' protected rights.