Synthetic likeness is a face or voice, real or invented, used to say words that were never said.
What the public calls it: deepfakes. That word usually means a fake video of a real person. Synthetic likeness covers more: it includes voices, it includes faces made from nothing, and it includes the cases nobody argues about because the person said yes.
The line that matters: consent. A synthetic likeness with the person’s consent is a chosen face. Puppet Ian is a synthetic likeness Ian chose. A synthetic likeness without consent is a deepfake in the sense everyone fears: somebody else’s face saying words they never said.
Why the term exists: “Deepfake” describes the trick. “Synthetic likeness” describes the thing, so we can talk about the consensual cases and the non-consensual ones without blurring them.
See also: deepfake, consent, digital double
In practice:
- [Read on Reuters] Giorgia Meloni’s 2026 EU trademark filing on her own voice: a head of state using IP law to draw the consent line.
- [Read the PSA] The FBI’s IC3 public service announcement on synthetic content (commonly called deepfakes): malicious actors manipulating benign photos and videos into explicit content for harassment and sextortion, including minors.
- [News on Nudes] 404 Media’s investigation into Radnor High School, Pennsylvania: a freshman used a nudify app to put five female classmates’ faces onto nude bodies.
