Abstract

Deepfakes are highly realistic, albeit fake, audiovisual contents created with AI. This technology allows the use of deceptive audiovisual material that can impersonate someone’s identity to erode their reputation or manipulate the audience. Deepfakes are also one of the applications of AI that can be used in cultural industries and even to produce works of art. On the one hand, it is important to clarify whether deepfakes in arts and culture are free from the ethical dangers mentioned above. On the other hand, there are specific ethical issues in this field of application. Deepfake technologies can be used to include the performance of deceased persons in audiovisual materials for the dissemination of cultural heritage, and to generate images or sounds in the style of real authors, but deepfakes are also potentially misleading by blurring the boundary between artwork and reality, and raise questions about the relationship between technology, artificial creativity and authorship. The answer to these problems requires an analysis of the normative foundations of copyright to accommodate the new role of AI.