Deepfakes: Search for a Model of Legal Regulation

Abstract

Modern studies of law, political science and other humanities reveal a major public concern about deepfake technologies, with legal regulation thereof only emerging. This paper looks into the main models whereby such technologies are regulated in Russia, China, European Union, United States and United Kingdom. Effective regulation of technologies should have as its main goal the protection of personal rights through methods of private and public law while striking a balance between relevant interests of other subjects to social relations. The study employs a variety of methods: comparative method (to analyze how deepfake technologies are regulated under various legal systems); method of rising from the abstract to the concrete (to move from regulation of AI to specific ways of regulating deepfake technologies); and the formal dogmatic method (to analyze legal provisions and their place in the regulation of deepfake technologies). The study provides a list of parties to AI-related social relations whose interests should be accounted for in developing the underlying regulation. The author points out certain fundamental questions to be resolved for legal regulation of deepfake technologies to emerge in Russia, and concludes by proposing answers to the said questions and identifying the vector of regulatory development.