Monique R
- Research Program Mentor
JD at University of the Philippines Diliman
Expertise
Law, Public Policy, Government, Legislative Processes
Bio
Hello! My name is Monique, and I am a lawyer, former elected official, and law professor. I recently pursued specializations on technology law and policy in the hope of helping build good governance frameworks to protect and advance human rights in the face of Artificial Intelligence and rapidly scaling digital industries. Law called out to me as a professional, but in my heart life is simply about nurturing joy. I am at my most joyful when I am singing, cooking for those I love, traveling some place new (and writing about it), and going out to nature to swim or hike.Project ideas
Can we use existing Trademark Law and Privacy Law principles as analogues to regulate AI-generated disinformation?
Recent technologies perpetuate new subsets of disinformation, enabled and powered by Artificial Intelligence ("AI"). With the prevalence of social media, any Internet user across the globe can fall prey to (or even unintentionally participate in) disinformation practices. Notorious types of this disinformation include deepfakes, astroturfing, synthetic voice cloning, and persona fabrication. They differ from one another, but they all involve at their core the misappropriation of identity of real individuals without their consent. When AI generates this misappropriation, the degree of harm is striking: the product is automated and often anonymous, i.e., there are no identifiable human beings we can point to as the wrongdoer. While we await the passage of laws to address this modern problem, we advance the theory that trademark law and privacy law provide for close analogues to regulating these practices. These include remedies for false endorsement and false designation, and remedies in connection with the common law right against misappropriation and statutory right of publicity. Otherwise put, we explore the extent to which existing trademark and privacy laws can act in consonance with tort and privacy law in protecting against AI-powered disinformation. In the process, we will be employing legal analysis, and conducting a thorough legal research comparing state and federal court rulings to discern what the body of law is on the matter.