On December 5, 2025, the Graduate School of Law at Nagoya University was privileged to host Professor Timo Minssen, Professor of Law at the University of Copenhagen and Founding Director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Biomedical Innovation Law (CeBIL). He delivered a hybrid lecture, held in Seminar Room 4 at ALEP and streamed online via Zoom, titled “Law, AI, Democracy and human dignity: Denmark’s legislative initiative in the fight against deepfakes”.

Professor Minssen opened his presentation by outlining the challenges posed by contemporary issues of quantum sovereignty and resilience, and their implications for democracy and human dignity. From this broader context, he introduced Denmark’s recent legislative initiative to combat deepfakes by creating a private-law based cause of action.

Professor Minssen examined the concrete harms associated with deepfakes, particularly in electoral contexts where manipulated content can spread rapidly and shape public opinion in a very short time. The Danish proposal was presented as an effort to construct a new private cause of action within copyright law, inspired by the “right to one’s own image” and relying on established copyright enforcement mechanisms to protect individuals against unauthorized, dignity-harming uses of their likeness.

Professor Minssen emphasized that this new instrument is intended to function as one additional layer in a broader, multi-layered regulatory system, complementing instruments such as the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, the Digital Services Act, among others.

The lecture concluded with an active Q&A session, which included discussion on the compatibility of Denmark’s proposal with the wider EU legislative architecture.

This special lecture series is part of the “Lawyer Training Program for Globalization”, funded by a donation from the Shinnippon-Hoki Foundation.