Professor Johanna Gibson comments on the Bruce Willis Deepfake for Wired.
Last month Bruce Willis' was used in a commercial for the Russian cell network Megafon, by striking a deal with a company called Deepcake to use a digital version of his appearance. The actor claims this was without the his or his representatives' involvement. This has caused concern among some experts about how actors and other individuals can protect their identities.
"There is a real risk that new actors (i.e., just starting out and desperate for breakthrough work) would be especially vulnerable to signing away their publicity rights as a condition of their first contracts," says Johanna Gibson, Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Queen Mary University of London. She continues: "This power imbalance could be exploited by studios keen both to commercialize image and character and indeed to avoid libel (depending upon the nature of that commercialization), as the performer would no longer have rights to control how their image is used."
Read the full article in Wired.