Written by Princy Singh Sikarwar,
Navrachana University,
September 2026
Introduction
What if one day technology would allow the reproduction of your image, your voice, and the promotion of your support for a product without your permission?
This is not a hypothetical case for celebrities as their name, image, voice, signature, etc. have considerable economic value. The laws of India do not have a single act regulating the issue of “personality rights” in totality. It has been recognised and regulated by judgments, privacy doctrine, the doctrine of passing off, and other laws of intellectual property.
This method of protection proved to be adequate when unauthorised use was a newspaper advertisement or some counterfeit poster. With the emergence of generative AI technologies, the scope of this problem has become much bigger. What the law should address today is whether it is possible to provide such protection in the light of new technologies that could create a complete artificial personality.
What Are Personality Rights?
Personality rights essentially deal with an individual’s right to use characteristics that make up his/her identification in commercial transactions. This includes the person’s name, image, voice, likeness, signature, or anything else characteristic of the personality.
In India, the general way to look at the right has been through two concepts that are related to each other, privacy and publicity. In essence, the former means the protection of a person against some kinds of unauthorised invasion of privacy. On the other hand, the latter involves the economic interest vested in the identity of a person.
In ICC Development (International) Ltd. v. Arvee Enterprises, the Delhi High Court has accepted that the right of publicity emanates from the right of privacy and can extend to things like the name of the person, personal traits, signature and even voice. Moreover, the court clarified that the right of publicity pertains to individuals and not businesses or events.[1]
The point worth noting here is that the right of personality cannot be considered a different type of copyright. The latter safeguards the work and not the individual himself/herself.
How Indian Courts Have Built the Right
The Indian position has mostly been shaped through judicial creativity, not legislation. In Titan Industries Ltd. v. Ramkumar Jewellers, the Delhi High Court acknowledged the value of a celebrity’s personality and offered protection against the unauthorised use of the identities of Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan for advertisements.[2] It was observed that “a celebrity should have an element of control over time, place and manner in which such identity is commercially used.”
The jurisprudence broadened greatly in Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi, in which the Delhi High Court issued a restraining order against unauthorised commercial exploitation of Bachchan’s name, likeness, and other characteristics of his personality.[3] The recent judgment of 2023 in Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India showcased how far the law could be extended into the digital space. The Delhi High Court provided protection to Kapoor’s name, image, likeness, voice and other personality traits, as well as technology-enabled misuse, including artificial intelligence, face morphing and GIFs.[4]
The above judgments prove that Indian courts are capable of developing the law to fit modern technological developments. Nevertheless, judicial development highlights a structural problem – protection is litigation-dependent.
The AI Problem Is Bigger Than Celebrity Endorsements
Generative AI renders personality rights far more complicated than ever before. Unauthorised advertising using traditional methods consists of an easily identifiable photograph, video, or quote. AI generated content does much more. It could place someone’s picture into a video of synthetic origin, clone their voice, and produce statements or endorsements that were never made by them.
Thus, legal damage is not limited to commercial losses only. AI generated impersonations harm reputation, establish wrong associations, or confuse people about which communications are genuine and which were made up.
The 2025 order of the Delhi High Court regarding Jaya Bachchan is especially relevant in this respect. The Court declared her name, image, likeness, signature, voice, and other easily identifiable features as components of personality rights, restraining unauthorised usage through the means of AI, generative AI, machine learning, deepfakes, and face morphing.[5]
It is a significant step forward, however, it reveals the limitations of the current approach as well. Courts can give an injunction after a legal dispute is brought to court; they cannot observe each and every AI generated impersonation on thousands of different platforms.
Is Existing IPR Law Enough?
Trademarks laws would protect a registered name or trade-mark. Copyright laws would protect photographs, performances and any other creative work. Passing Off Laws would be useful if there is misrepresentation and injury to goodwill. There could also be protection under privacy doctrines. All these laws were not formulated with synthetic identity in mind. The crux of the matter is that the identity can be replicated without replicating a traditional “work” at all. An artificial video can be wholly new for copyright purposes and yet infringe the unique identity of a person in question.
It is in this sense that personality rights have a peculiar place in the domain of IPR. It overlap with intellectual property but cannot be equated with it. It is for this reason that the current judicial approach is good but is far from perfect. India should have more clarity regarding the scope of personality rights, consent, exploitation, digital impersonation and intermediaries.
Conclusion
India has progressed to a great extent in making personality rights a legally enforceable right, but still, the law in its majority is a judge-made law. It may well do in an age when there is traditional celebrity exploitation, but is less convincing in an age where a person’s identity can be replicated by digital means within seconds. The idea should not be to make celebrities a monopoly on any material that looks like them. This could be detrimental to journalism, criticism, parodies, satires, artistic freedom and public discourse.
The real issue now is whether a law can be made to protect identity before technology makes it difficult to distinguish the two.
References
[1]ICC Development (International) Ltd. v. Arvee Enterprises, 2003 (26) PTC 245 (Del.).
[2]Titan Industries Ltd. v. Ramkumar Jewellers, 2012 SCC OnLine Del 2382.
[3]Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi, 2022 SCC OnLine Del 4110.
[4]Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India & Ors., 2023 SCC OnLine Del 6914.
[5]Jaya Bachchan v. Bollywood Bubble Television & Ors., CS(COMM) 1194/2025, (Delhi High Ct. Nov. 10, 2025).