Protecting individuals’ likeness
Petitioners ask the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation to recognize deepfake risks, amend the Copyright Act to grant individuals rights to their body and voice, and ensure federal enforcement. The government responds it will modernize PIPEDA, issue a National AI Strategy with technical safeguards, and has proposed criminal and elections bills addressing deepfakes.
Why we would sign this petition
- Provides legal control over one’s likeness, helping individuals prevent non-consensual deepfakes and related misuse.
- Addresses a federal gap by explicitly recognizing rights to body and voice, creating a clear statutory basis for claims.
- Federal enforcement mechanisms would provide consistent remedies and deterrence nationwide and across platforms.
Why we wouldn’t sign this petition
- Amending the Copyright Act may be the wrong tool; privacy or targeted AI laws (as the government plans to modernize PIPEDA) could be more appropriate.
- Creating new likeness rights could raise difficult trade-offs with freedom of expression, journalistic use and technological innovation, requiring careful limits.
- Criminal and elections bills plus common‑law remedies are already addressing parts of the problem, so the petition risks duplicating or complicating existing legal paths.
The summary and both sets of reasons are AI-generated from the petition and given equal weight. Claims are the petitioners’ own; consult the official record for the full text.
Official petition
Petition to the House of Commons in Parliament assembled The recent advancement and popular use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like Generative AI (GenAI) have led to a rise in disinformation online due to "deepfakes" (falsely generated video, audio, and/or images of a person's "likeness" without their consent); GenAI tools have developed to a point where it is difficult for the public to determine the authenticity of a video, audio, or image source; GenAI tools can be and have been used maliciously and/or otherwise to imitate and/or impersonate an individual’s likeness without their consent; There is little legal precedence at the federal level that ensures the protection of the "likeness" of citizens from tools like GenAI and the deepfakes that they produce; Citizens should have control over the use of their likeness; and Citizens deserve innate rights related to their own individual body and voice. We, the undersigned, citizens of Canada, call upon the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation to: 1. Acknowledge the risks to an individual's rights, privacy, and safety due to digital deepfakes from tools like GenAI; 2. Strengthen the Canadian Copyright Act to include an individual's right to their own body and voice; and 3. Ensure enforcement mechanisms are in place at a federal level to support individuals’ rights to their likeness.
Government response
Response by the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario Signed by The Honourable Evan Solomon The Government would like to thank the petitioners for bringing forward their concerns and for actively engaging in the important conversation around protecting individuals’ rights in the digital age. The Government recognizes the growing public concern regarding the challenges posed by artificial intelligence (AI), particularly with respect to the creation of deepfakes and the associated risks to individual privacy, safety, and the misuse of an individual’s likenesses without consent. The Government agrees that modern legislative frameworks should reflect these evolving risks and is committed to strengthening safeguards to help mitigate misuse of AI technology. This includes modernization of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). Introduced in 2000, PIPEDA is the federal law that governs the handling of personal information in the course of commercial activities. PIPEDA’s purpose is to protect individuals’ right to privacy, while recognizing organizations’ need to handle personal information for legitimate business purposes. It applies wherever there is a real and substantial connection to Canada. In practical terms, this means that any organization that markets products and services to Canadians is subject to PIPEDA – no matter where it is located. The Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation has stated his intention to introduce legislation to modernize PIPEDA, highlighting that it is essential to mitigating the evolving risks associated with advanced generative AI systems, including the creation of deepfakes. In addition, the Government will soon release a National AI Strategy that will contemplate new measures for protecting Canadians from AI-related risks. Policies proposed by the Strategy will be informed by feedback from consultations with thousands of Canadians conducted in Fall 2025, as well as recommendations from the AI Strategy Task Force. In parallel, Canada is advancing technical work on the risks of generative AI and the safeguards needed to address these risks. Canada’s AI Safety Institute (CAISI) was established in 2024 to improve understanding of the evolving risks associated with advanced AI systems, including generative AI, and how to mitigate them. For example, CAISI conducts technical research on methods for improving the detectability of AI-generated synthetic content. Further, CAISI co-led, with the Australian AISI, the development of the Synthetic Content Research Agenda, which sets the direction for research to address the risks of synthetic content—like deepfakes used for impersonation, fraud, non-consensual intimate imagery, and child sexual abuse material. The Department of Canadian Heritage is also examining options for a future online safety regime that would hold social media platforms accountable for reducing exposure to harmful content on their platforms, particularly for children and other vulnerable users. To that end, the Government has recently reconvened the Expert Advisory Group on online safety, whose members contributed to the development of previous online harms legislation, to engage on new and emerging issues related to online harms. The Government will seek the group’s expertise and advice on a targeted set of issues that have emerged since the last consultation due to significant technological changes, including advances in AI, chatbots, and AI companions. The group’s findings will help inform ongoing legislative policy related to online safety. The Criminal Code makes it illegal to distribute intimate images without the consent of the person depicted. However, the offence does not apply to sexually explicit deepfakes. The Government introduced Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act, on December 9, 2025. Bill C-16 proposes to amend the offence’s definition of “intimate image” to include sexual deepfakes. The distribution, and other similar acts, of any visual representation made by any electronic or mechanical means and showing an identifiable person being depicted as nude, as exposing their sexual organs or as engaging in explicit sexual activity would be criminalized, if the representation is likely to be mistaken for an authentic visual recording of that person. The Criminal Code also already criminalizes all conduct related to child sexual abuse and exploitation material, depicting both real and fictional children (section 163.1), including sexual deepfakes. On March 26, 2026, the Government introduced Bill C-25, the Strong and Free Elections Act, to help maintain the strength and resilience of Canada’s electoral system. Among other amendments, the bill proposes to amend the Canada Elections Act to prohibit deepfakes of electoral actors that intend to mislead Canadians into thinking they are real. In addition to the initiatives outlined above, individuals may have other paths of redress for misuses of their likenesses or voices in certain circumstances, including the common law tort of appropriation of personality. The Government of Canada is committed to developing effective solutions that protect against risks and engender public trust in the responsible development and use of AI technologies in Canada.