A cloned celebrity voice sells a product which the celebrity never endorsed. An AI chatbot mimics a Bollywood star's speech patterns for commercial gain. A deepfake video puts words in someone's mouth they never said. These are not just hypotheticals, they're recent Indian court filings. As generative AI makes convincing impersonation nearly free, the law protecting a person's name, face, and voice has become one of the fastest-moving areas of Indian jurisprudence, built almost entirely by judges rather than legislators.

Why Does This Matter Now?

Over the past few years, a growing roster of Indian celebrities — actors, singers, and public figures, etc. has approached the Delhi and Bombay High Courts seeking urgent injunctions against AI-driven misuse of their identity. The surge reflects a simple reality: deepfake tools have made unauthorized commercial exploitation of a person's persona cheap, fast, and hard to trace. For brands, advertisers, and platforms, this isn't just a celebrity problem, but a liability problem. Using AI-generated content that touches on someone's likeness without clear consent can now trigger fast-tracked court action and platform-wide takedown orders.

Understanding Personality Rights in India

India has no dedicated personality rights statute. Instead, protection has been built through judicial interpretation across several sources: the constitutional right to privacy and dignity under Article 21 (as affirmed in the landmark Puttaswamy privacy ruling), the tort of passing off under trademark law, and moral rights for performers under the Copyright Act, 1957. Courts have steadily expanded this patchwork into what is now commonly called the "right of publicity", i.e. control over the commercial use of one's own identity.

What All Are Protected?

Indian courts have recognized a wide range of protectable attributes: name, image, voice, signature, distinctive gestures, dialogue delivery, and even catchphrases. This goes well beyond simple photographic likeness. It covers the recognizable "persona" a public figure has built over a career.

Deepfakes: The New Threat Vector

How Do They Work?

Deepfakes use generative AI to synthesize realistic video, images, or audio of a real person and are often trained on publicly available footage or photos. This makes it possible to put fabricated words, actions, or endorsements into someone's likeness convincingly.

Common Misuse Patterns

The recurring patterns in Indian litigation include fake product endorsements, AI chatbots and merchandise trading on a celebrity's persona, cloned voices used in songs or ads, and non-consensual or obscene synthetic imagery.

Judicial Snapshot

Indian courts have moved quickly to fill the statutory gap.

In Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India (2023), the Delhi High Court extended personality rights protection beyond name and likeness to cover mannerisms, gestures, dialogue style, and the actor's signature catchphrase, explicitly restraining AI-generated deepfakes and directing domain registrars and ISPs to block infringing sites.

In Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi (2022), the Delhi High Court granted comprehensive protection against unauthorized use of the actor's name, voice, and image.

In Jackie Shroff v. The Peppy Store (2024) extended relief to AI chatbots and e-commerce misuse of an actor's persona. While the Bombay High Court, in Arijit Singh v. Codible Ventures (2024) established that unauthorized AI voice cloning of a singer's distinctive voice violates his personality rights. This is a significant precedent given how central voice cloning has become to deepfake misuse.

Since then, a steady stream of similar orders has followed for other public figures, most commonly using "John Doe" injunctions that allow courts to act against unidentified infringers as a class.

Where Does the Law Fall Short?

Despite this active judicial response, real gaps remain. There is still no dedicated legislation defining what qualifies as a deepfake or setting clear penalties for its misuse.

The IT Rules, 2021 impose due-diligence and takedown obligations on intermediaries, but enforcement against anonymous defendants operating across jurisdictions remains slow and resource-intensive. There is also no settled framework for whether personality rights survive death, no codified exceptions for satire and parody, and no clear consent-and-licensing regime governing whether a person's data or footage can be used to train AI models in the first place — an issue now actively being litigated.

Practical Protection Framework for Public Figures & Brands

For celebrities and public figures:

1. Register distinctive names, signatures, or catchphrases as trademarks where eligible, adding a statutory layer to judge-made protection.
2. Build monitoring processes to catch unauthorized AI content early, since courts respond fastest to prompt, well-evidenced filings.
3. Use "John Doe" style suits to act against unidentified infringers as a class rather than chasing individual violators one at a time.

For brands and advertisers:

1. Build explicit AI-use and likeness clauses into every endorsement contract you sign and don't just assume a signed deal covers AI-generated spin-offs.
2. Vet any AI-generated marketing content for anything that could resemble a real, identifiable person without documented consent.
3. Establish a rapid internal review process before publishing AI content involving real people, given how quickly courts are now granting injunctions.

What is in the Future of Personality Rights?

Expect continued reliance on judge-made law in the near term, with courts refining the balance between personality rights and free expression — protecting satire and parody while shutting down commercial exploitation and non-consensual content. Longer term, pressure is building for a codified framework, partly driven by comparisons to jurisdictions like the EU, which has moved toward binding AI-specific obligations, and various U.S. states with standalone right-of-publicity statutes. As AI training practices come under scrutiny, India's courts and eventually its legislature will likely have to address consent for AI training data directly — not just downstream misuse.

Conclusion: Building an IP Strategy That Grows With You

Personality rights have shifted from a niche celebrity concern to a core commercial asset requiring proactive legal protection and not just reactive litigation after a deep fake surface. Whether you're a public figure safeguarding your identity or a brand navigating AI-generated content, waiting until misuse happens is the costliest strategy of all.