Explainer: Why celebs are fighting for their personality rights

In the past few months, several Bollywood celebrities have petitioned the courts to prevent misuse of their name, image, voice & other personal attributes via AI-generated content. Anvitii Rai explains how Indian law interprets personality rights and why this needs updating in the era of deepfakes

Actors & singers ask for protection

On Wednesday, singer Kumar Sanu got a court order protecting his personality rights. Sanu had sought protection of his personality and publicity rights, including his name, voice, vocal style and technique, vocal arrangements and interpretations, mannerisms and manner of singing, images, photographs, likeness and signature. Meanwhile, actor Akshay Kumar has approached the Bombay High Court seeking similar protection. 

With the surge of AI-generated deepfake images and videos, and social media platforms expanding their reach, celebrities have suffered instances where their likeliness and catchphrases are utilised to promote products not officially endorsed by them, support political ideologies that they do not back, or used for illicit activities like scams. In some cases, deepfake explicit images have gone viral as well.

This explains the influx of these personality rights cases—celebrities seek to protect their image and not have third parties benefit from them commercially without consent. This has formed the basis of the cases for Asha Bhosle, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan and Karan Johar this year. 

What are personality and publicity rights?

When it comes to to a well-known person, the right to publicise their persona commercially is treated as a part of their right to privacy, as the persona belongs to them. This forms the basis of publicity rights. When a specific word, mannerism, speech pattern or movement is linked to one person exclusively in the public sphere, the courts can consider their use commercially as the celebrity’s personality rights. While the freedom of speech and expression is a fundamental right, so is the right to live a dignified life, and the former must be balanced against the latter. 

Examples include actor Anil Kapoor’s “jhakaas” or Amitabh Bachchan’s baritone voice, both of which have been awarded legal protection. The misuse of celebrity personas not only dilutes their brand equity but also misguides the public. There are instances of  fake brand endorsements and advertisements using AI-generated images of celebrities circulated on social media.

What can a celebrity own?

Going by the verdicts so far, the courts believe that as long as an aspect is inexplicably associated with a celebrity in the public domain, they can be granted the personality rights for the same. The rights, however, hinge on outright recognition, which is why actors and singers have been granted the rights to their respective signature expressions. The caveat is that these rights are not inheritable, and the personality rights cease to exist when the celebrity passes away, as established by Krishna Kishore Singh vs Sarla A Saraogi & others, wherein late actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s father was not granted the injunction he sought against the makers of the movie Nyay: The Justice, based on the actor’s life.

According to Reuters, in a more far-reaching request, Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan have appealed to the courts to order Google to have safeguards to ensure such YouTube videos uploaded do not train other AI platforms. 

What do the Indian laws say?

Indian law does not have specific provisions for personality or publicity rights, and cases like this fall under Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), and Articles 19 and 21 of the Constitution which grant the freedom of expression and the right to live with dignity, respectively. In November 2022, in one of the first cases,  the courts granted Amitabh Bachchan an injunction order against entities who were using his likeliness (specifically from the TV show Kaun Banega Crorepati) to run lottery scams on WhatsApp. Bachchan’s name and public persona had cropped up in another case in 2012 — Titan Industries vs Ramkumar Jewellers, wherein the latter was ordered to take down hoardings, depicting Bachchan in images copied from a Tanishq campaign. In its ad-interim order in favour of actor Suneil Shetty recently, the judge observed that  “unauthorised use of AI generated images of celebrities constitutes a blatant invasion of their privacy and their fundamental rights.”

Can the law be made more robust?

As deepfakes proliferate, the need to codify and strengthen personality and publicity rights has become urgent. The controversy over OpenAI’s voice assistant Sky, which Scarlett Johansson said mimicked her voice from Her, underscored how technology can blur consent and identity. Closer home, composer Ilaiyaraaja’s legal battle shows these gaps — the Madras HC held he could not claim exclusive ownership of film compositions, a ruling now under appeal. 

Global precedents offer direction—US courts recognised publicity rights in 1953, and the European Court of Human Rights extended similar protection in 2003. Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift’s effort to regain her master recordings likewise reflects a worldwide push for greater artistic control. In India, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has mentioned in interviews that proposed amendments to the IT Rules may address deepfake impersonation, but a dedicated statute on personality rights is still missing.