Decoding Personality Rights in the Age of AI

Syllabus: GS2/Polity and Governance; GS3/Role of IT

Context

• Recently, a lawsuit was filed in the Delhi High Court related to AI-generated deepfake videos infringed upon personality rights underscores how AI blurs the line between authenticity and deception, compelling societies to rethink the legal and ethical boundaries of human identity in the digital era.

Understanding Personality Rights in the Age of AI

• Personality rights encompass an individual’s control over their name, image, likeness, voice, and other personal identifiers.
• These rights aim to prevent unauthorised exploitation of identity, historically rooted in privacy and commercial protection.
  • However, AI and deepfake technologies have radically disrupted this framework.
• Deepfakes—AI-generated videos or audios that mimic real people—can spread misinformation, enable extortion, and erode public trust. 
• Its misuse risks commodifying human identity, prompting the need for comprehensive regulation, while generative AI advances creativity and commerce.

Legal Precedents & Gaps in India

• India currently lacks a comprehensive statute defining personality rights. Enforcement relies on fragmented judicial precedents, leaving individuals vulnerable to digital impersonation and exploitation.
• India’s legal framework for personality rights remains uncodified, deriving from Article 21 of the Constitution and the landmark Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) privacy judgment.
  • Courts have addressed AI-related infringements as privacy or intellectual property violations.
• Key precedents include:
  • Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi (2022): Recognised celebrity personality rights.
  • Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India (2023): Prohibited AI-generated uses of Kapoor’s likeness and his catchphrase ‘Jhakaas’.
  • Arijit Singh v. Codible Ventures LLP (2024): Protected Singh’s voice from AI cloning.
  • Jackie Shroff Case (2024): Delhi HC restrained unauthorised use of his persona by AI chatbots and e-commerce platforms.
• India’s Information Technology Act (2000) and Intermediary Guidelines (2024) address impersonation and deepfakes but suffer from weak enforcement due to anonymity and cross-border complexities.

Global Perspectives

• World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO): It recognizes personality rights as an essential part of intellectual property law.
• United States: Personality rights—framed as the ‘Right of Publicity’—are treated as transferable property interests, varying by state.
  • It, in Haelan Laboratories v. Topps Chewing Gum (1953), recognised the right to commercially exploit one’s identity.
  • Recent developments include:
    • Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security Act of 2024 (ELVIS Act) was passed in the State of Tennessee, USA to protect musicians from unauthorised use of their voice, i.e. ‘soundalikes’.
    • Character AI Lawsuits (2024): Courts rejected First Amendment defences where AI chatbots allegedly encouraged self-harm and impersonation, signalling judicial concern over AI’s real-world harms.
• EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, 2016): It treats personal and biometric data as dignity-based rights, requiring explicit consent.
  • The EU AI Act (2024) further classifies deepfake technologies as high-risk, mandating disclosure, transparency, and labelling of synthetic content.
• China: The Beijing Internet Court, in 2024, ruled that synthetic voices must not deceive consumers.
  • China’s approach represents tight state regulation over generative content.

Expanding the Scope of Personality Rights

• The ‘AI Ethics and Creators’ Feelings: Extended Personality Rights as (Property) Rights to Object’, propose extending rights to cover style and persona appropriation.
• The ‘Safeguarding Identity’ argues for statutory AI definitions and high-risk classification of deepfakes in India’s fragmented legal system.
• The Ethics and Challenges of Legal Personhood for AI (Yale Law Journal), cautions against granting AI legal personhood, warning of potential erosion of human rights.

Human Dignity and AI Autonomy (Ethical Dimension)

• Ethical debates focus on human dignity, autonomy, and accountability. 
• The UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI (2021) emphasises a rights-based framework, asserting that AI must never exploit individuals. 
• As AI-generated recreations of deceased artists become more common, Indian jurisprudence—which considers personality rights non-heritable—faces renewed scrutiny.

Towards a Unified Framework

• The present lawsuit filed at Delhi High Court exemplifies a systemic gap in AI regulation. India urgently needs:
  • Codified personality rights legislation;
  • Mandatory watermarking of AI-generated content;
  • Platform liability provisions for hosting deepfakes;
  • Global cooperation for enforcement parity.
• The deepfake advisory (2024) is a start, but robust statutory safeguards are essential to ensure ethical AI governance and cross-border accountability.

Conclusion

• The intersection of AI, law, and identity is no longer a theoretical debate—it is a lived reality. The Bachchan lawsuit epitomises the urgent need to recalibrate legal frameworks in response to AI’s growing ability to replicate human likeness and voice.
• As global jurisdictions diverge between dignity-based and property-based models, only international harmonisation, guided by UNESCO’s ethical principles, can safeguard both innovation and human integrity in the digital future.

Source: TH