Safeguarding Identity in the Age of AI: Legal Recourse for Deepfakes and Voice Theft in the UAE

The latest examples or developments that triggered significant debates on deepfakes are certainly deepfaked images of Taylor Swift or the Scarlett Johansson and OpenAI’s voice theft case. One of the biggest emerging issues is deep fakes and voice theft that in the UAE after the examples of other states where such unauthorized manipulation and distribution of people’s likenesses and voices become global attention.

UAE Rights for Deepfakes and Voice Theft Offenses

To the best of my knowledge, it is still an unresolved issue as to whether the use of deepfakes or voice theft constitutes a violation of a person’s Rights of Privacy under the UAE Civil Code or a breach of any existing law regulating the usage of artificial intelligence (AI). Defamation and cyber fraud; privacy invasion or breach thereof: these become legal issues that the UAE Penal Code, the UAE Cybercrimes Law will address if related to deepfakes or voice theft, attract a prison term or a fine.
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In case of IP infringement the law for Copyright in UAE can be of highly useful. But the issue of AI Copyright on output productions, and related cases of Copyright infringements conducted by AI Models is still debated globally.

Legal Regulation and the Attempts Made by UAE Authorities

The UAE is trying to identify the legal perspective for the democratization of artificial intelligence. DIFC amended the Data Protection Regulation and Designated Non-Fintech Financial Institutions released the AI Strategy 2031.

Prominent challenges were mentioned relating to the need for updating the legislation corresponding to the speed of progress in AI sphere but concerning the UAE, opinion of experts reflects optimism. They emphasized the need to implement protective measures for specific artificial intelligence systems trained on personal data, utilizing encryption, anonymization, secure access, and compliance with the legal requirements for data protection, meaning that users should understand the process and approve it in addition, AI working with personal data should only collect the data that is needed.

Conclusion

Despite the absence of a dedicated AI law in the UAE, it is crucial to highlight that the current legal conditions combined with the UAE leadership’s strategic vision for advanced legislation, and the prioritization of the definition of legal regulation give the residents at least certain ways to seek justice in case of AI offenses.

More broadly, it can be concluded that the UAE is already enforcing existing legal measures in response to deepfakes, voice theft, and other AI-related infringements while continuing to work on the elaboration of nuanced regulations that would regulate AI usage.