In May 2024, Professor Dinusha Mendis, was awarded funding from the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation to carry out research into deepfake technology and the law.

The project, carried out in collaboration with Dr Rossana Ducato (CIPPM Visiting Fellow and Senior Lecturer University of Aberdeen) and Professor Tatsuhiro Ueno (Waseda University, Tokyo) explores the impact of deepfake technology on intellectual property, data protection, privacy and fraud laws and does so from the perspective of UK and Japan.

Deepfake AI is used to create convincing images, audio, video hoaxes and is a portmanteau of ‘deep learning’ and ‘fake’. Although the technology is advancing rapidly, it remains heavily unexplored from a policy and legal perspective. There have been initiatives in UK and Japan to address the challenges raised by this technology, however there is still a long way to go. Specific regulation in the area is currently absent in both countries.

The main objective of this research is to explore deepfake technology and the legal implications for UK and Japan, with a particular focus on copyright, data protection, privacy and fraud law. The project will consider the law and technology relating to deepfakes, in collaboration with a range of stakeholders drawn from UK and Japan in an attempt to understand the issues more deeply and to identify the way forward.

Two stakeholder roundtables will be held. The first will be hosted at Waseda University Tokyo in December 2024 and the second will be hosted at Bournemouth University in April 2025. Outputs from these stakeholder roundtables will be published following the completion of the project.

The project is due to commence in November 2024 and is expected to conclude in August 2025.