Can You Legally Make a Deepfake of a Public Figure?

The honest answer is that it depends on two things: what you do with the deepfake, and where you do it. Making a deepfake of a public figure is not automatically illegal, and in some contexts it is firmly protected expression. A satirical clip of a politician is treated very differently from a fake advertisement in which a celebrity appears to endorse a product, and both differ from a sexual deepfake, which is unlawful regardless of who the subject is. Fame does not remove legal protection; it reshapes it.

This guide explains the law on deepfakes of public figures across the two frameworks that matter most for a European company and its international audience: the European Union, including the Netherlands, and the United States. It covers why a public figure's legal position is unusual, what uses are generally protected, where the line into commercial and personal-rights violations falls, how sexual and deceptive deepfakes are treated, and where the law is heading. One note first: this is general information, not legal advice, and the rules vary by country and US state, so consult a qualified lawyer about a specific project.

The idea to hold onto is that being a public figure is a double-edged status on both sides of the Atlantic. Public figures are more open to criticism, satire, and commentary than private citizens, because they are legitimate subjects of public debate. At the same time, they keep strong control over the commercial value of their identity and full protection against sexual and fraudulent uses. The EU and the US reach broadly similar destinations by very different legal routes, and the differences matter.

The Short Answer: Purpose Decides, and So Does Place

Almost every rule in this area turns on the purpose of the deepfake. Commentary, satire, parody, criticism, and news reporting are generally protected. Commercial exploitation, sexual content, and deceptive impersonation are generally not. That basic split holds in both Europe and the United States.

What changes across the Atlantic is the legal machinery. In the US, a public figure's identity is protected mainly by the right of publicity, a property-style right against commercial use, sitting alongside a strong First Amendment tradition. In the EU, there is no single right of publicity. Protection comes instead from national portrait and personality rights, from the General Data Protection Regulation, which treats a recognizable face and voice as personal data, and increasingly from the EU AI Act's labeling rules. A project that is lawful in one place can therefore be unlawful in another, which is why purpose and place have to be assessed together.

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Why Public Figures Are a Special Case

Public figures occupy an unusual legal position because two principles pull in opposite directions. On one side, they are legitimate subjects of public debate, so the law gives wide room to comment on, criticize, and mock them. A citizen has a strong interest in discussing a politician or a celebrity, and both US and European courts protect that interest. On the other side, public figures often have the most valuable identities to exploit and the most to lose from a convincing fake, so the law also gives them robust tools against commercial misuse and reputational or sexual harm.

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The result is that fame widens the space for expression while narrowing the space for exploitation. In the Netherlands this is visible directly in the portrait right, where courts weigh the depicted person's interest against freedom of expression, and for public figures the expression interest often weighs more heavily, yet their commercial and privacy interests still count. In the US the same tension appears as the gap between broad First Amendment protection for commentary and the strict limits the right of publicity places on commercial use. Same tension, two legal vocabularies.

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What Is Generally Protected: Satire, Parody, Commentary, and News

Expression about public figures is the most clearly protected category everywhere. In the US, satire, parody, commentary, criticism, and news enjoy strong First Amendment protection, which is why a clearly comedic deepfake of a celebrity, like the widely shared impersonations of a well-known actor posted to social media, has not generally created liability. In the EU, freedom of expression is protected under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the EU Charter, and the AI Act includes a narrow carve-out that lightens the labeling burden for evidently artistic or satirical work.

The difference is in how the protection is applied. US law tends to treat protected speech as close to a categorical shield. European law tends to treat it as one side of a proportionality balance: a Dutch court applying the portrait right, for example, weighs the public interest in the expression against the individual's reasonable interest, so even a satirical deepfake can in principle be challenged if it causes disproportionate harm. In practice both systems protect genuine commentary, but the European approach leaves more room to object where a supposed parody is really a vehicle for harm.

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Commercial Use: Publicity Rights in the US, Portrait Rights in the EU

Commercial use is where the law bites hardest, and it is the most common reason a deepfake of a public figure becomes unlawful. The principle is shared: you cannot use someone's identity to sell something without permission. The mechanism differs.

In the US, this is the right of publicity, a state-based right protecting the commercial use of a person's name, image, likeness, and in states like Tennessee their voice, under laws such as the ELVIS Act. A fake endorsement can also violate the federal Lanham Act as false endorsement, as commentators noted when an AI version of a famous actor appeared in a dental-plan advertisement he never made. In the EU, the same conduct is caught by national portrait and personality rights. In the Netherlands, the portrait right in the Copyright Act lets a recognizable person object to publication where they have a reasonable interest, and the Dutch Supreme Court has interpreted "portrait" broadly, so the decisive question for a deepfake is not whether the image is real but whether the person is recognizable. Well-known people are recognized to have a commercial interest in their own image, which the portrait right protects. France protects the same ground through the droit a l'image, and Germany through the right to one's own image under the KUG.

Layered on top in Europe is data protection. A recognizable face or voice is personal data under the GDPR, and biometric data used for identification enjoys heightened protection, so creating a deepfake of a real person generally requires a lawful basis such as consent or legitimate interest, which a commercial exploiter rarely has. And from August 2026, the EU AI Act requires deepfakes to be labeled as AI-generated, with the European Commission's guidance making clear that the artistic carve-out does not cover AI-generated deepfakes of celebrities used in advertising.

Sexual and Deceptive Deepfakes: No Exception for Fame

The categories that are unlawful for anyone are unlawful for public figures too, and celebrity offers no defense. Sexual or intimate deepfakes are illegal on both sides of the Atlantic, as the flood of fabricated explicit images of a global pop star in early 2024 underlined. In the US, publishing them is criminal under the TAKE IT DOWN Act and numerous state laws. In the Netherlands, they are covered by the criminal prohibition on non-consensual sexual imagery in Article 139h of the Penal Code, and separately by the GDPR, under which the Dutch data protection authority treats such content as unlawful and gives the depicted person a right to have it removed.

Deceptive deepfakes presented as real are the grayer zone, and here the two systems diverge most. In the US, a public figure suing for defamation must clear the high bar of proving "actual malice," meaning the maker knew the content was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. In Europe there is no actual-malice rule; a court instead balances the individual's right to private life and reputation under Article 8 against freedom of expression under Article 10, a proportionality assessment that can favor the public figure more readily than the US standard. Deceptive political deepfakes add another layer: around 30 US states restrict them, mostly through disclosure rules that face First Amendment challenges, while the EU relies on the AI Act's labeling duty, the Digital Services Act's removal obligations, and national election law.

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Where the Law Is Heading

Both systems are moving toward stronger, more explicit protection of a person's likeness, again by different routes.

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In the US, the NO FAKES Act, which the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced unanimously in June 2026, would create a federal "digital replication right" over anyone's voice and visual likeness, living or deceased, with carve-outs for news, commentary, satire, and parody, and postmortem protection lasting decades. It is not yet law, and free-expression groups warn it could chill legitimate speech, but its momentum signals where US policy is going.

Europe is moving in parallel. The EU AI Act's transparency obligations become enforceable on August 2, 2026, making deepfake labeling a legal requirement across all 27 member states. And Denmark has gone furthest, creating a new intellectual-property-style right over a person's voice and appearance, expected in 2026, which reframes what were personality rights as something closer to transferable IP, with exceptions for parody and satire. Denmark has signaled it wants the model adopted EU-wide. The convergence is notable: the US is building a property-like replica right, while Europe is layering IP-style protection onto its existing portrait-rights and data-protection foundation.

What This Means If You Make One

For a creator, the safe path follows from purpose and place. If the aim is commentary, satire, criticism, or news, you are on the firmest ground, though in Europe you should still expect to label the content as AI-generated. If the aim is commercial, to sell, promote, or endorse, you need the person's consent or a license, because both the US right of publicity and European portrait rights will otherwise apply. Never make sexual content of a real person, and do not present a realistic fake as genuine in a way that could deceive, defame, or influence an election. And check the specific jurisdiction, because a US state's publicity law, a Dutch portrait-right claim, and the EU AI Act can all reach the same piece of content differently.

There is a useful, concrete rule from the Dutch data protection authority worth internalizing: a deepfake made and shared only within a private circle of family or friends falls outside the GDPR, but the moment it is shared more widely, you need a legal basis and you must disclose that it is a deepfake. That captures the European instinct in one line: label it, and do not exploit or harm the person.

For platforms and rights holders, the challenge is enforcement rather than doctrine. A 2022 study for the Dutch Ministry of Justice concluded that existing law already prohibits most harmful deepfakes and that the real problem is finding and acting on them, given anonymous, cross-border creators and sheer volume. That is a detection problem. DuckDuckGoose, based in Delft, builds for exactly this gap: its DeepDetector analyzes images and video for the signatures of synthetic media, helping platforms and rights holders identify unauthorized deepfakes of public figures so they can enforce portrait and publicity rights, meet AI Act labeling and Digital Services Act removal duties, and act on takedown requests in time. For the wider legal picture, see our guide to whether it is illegal to make a deepfake.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you legally make a deepfake of a public figure?
It depends on the purpose and the location. Satire, parody, commentary, criticism, and news are generally protected in both the EU and the US. Commercial use, sexual content, and deceptive impersonation are generally unlawful. A public figure's fame widens the room for comment but does not remove protection against exploitation or harm.

Is it legal to make a satirical or parody deepfake of a politician?
Usually, yes. Political satire is strongly protected, by the First Amendment in the US and by freedom of expression under Article 10 in Europe. The difference is that European law applies a proportionality balance rather than a near-absolute shield, so a supposed parody that causes disproportionate harm can still be challenged, and in the EU it may need an AI-generated label.

Can I use a deepfake of a celebrity in an advertisement?
No, not without consent. Commercial use of a public figure's likeness is where the law is strictest. In the US it violates the right of publicity and can be false endorsement under the Lanham Act; in the EU it breaches national portrait and personality rights and the GDPR. This applies whether the likeness is filmed or AI-generated.

How does the Netherlands protect public figures from deepfakes?
Through several overlapping tools. The portrait right in the Copyright Act lets a recognizable person object to publication where they have a reasonable interest, and Dutch courts treat a recognizable synthetic image as a portrait. The GDPR protects the face and voice as personal data and gives a right to removal, Article 139h of the Penal Code covers sexual deepfakes, and the Dutch data protection authority requires public deepfakes to be labeled.

Are public figures protected from sexual deepfakes?
Yes, fully. Being a public figure is no exception. Sexual deepfakes are illegal in the US under the TAKE IT DOWN Act and state laws, and in the EU under national criminal law, such as Article 139h in the Netherlands, and the GDPR. High-profile incidents involving celebrities have driven much of the recent legislation.

Do I have to label a deepfake of a public figure?
In the EU, increasingly yes. The EU AI Act requires deepfakes to be labeled as AI-generated from August 2026, and the Commission's guidance says this applies to commercial celebrity deepfakes. The Dutch data protection authority already requires disclosure when a deepfake is shared beyond a private circle. In the US, labeling is required mainly for political content in some states.

Can a public figure sue me for defamation over a deepfake?
Yes, if it is presented as real and harms their reputation, though the standard differs. In the US, a public figure must prove actual malice, meaning you knew it was false or were reckless about the truth. In Europe, courts balance the person's right to reputation and private life against freedom of expression, which can favor the public figure more readily than the US test.

What is the NO FAKES Act, and does it apply in Europe?
The NO FAKES Act is a US federal bill that would create a right over AI replicas of a person's voice and likeness, advanced by a Senate committee in June 2026 but not yet law. It would apply in the US, not the EU. Europe protects likeness through national portrait and personality rights, the GDPR, and the AI Act, and Denmark is separately creating an IP-style right over voice and image.

This article is for general information only and is not legal advice. Laws on deepfakes, likeness, and personality rights change frequently and differ by country and US state. Consult a qualified lawyer about your specific situation.