Personality rights in India: voice, image, and likeness in the AI era

Short answer. India does not have a codified personality-rights statute. Indian courts have nevertheless built a working doctrine out of the constitutional right to privacy, the tort of passing off, and the general principle against misappropriation of identity. The Delhi High Court in particular has granted injunctions protecting name, image, voice, likeness, signature phrases, and distinctive mannerisms against unauthorised commercial use — including AI-generated deepfakes, voice clones, and morphed content. This article explains how the doctrine works, the key cases, and the remedies available.

The three legal roots

Indian personality-rights doctrine draws on three distinct legal foundations, woven together depending on the facts.

The first is the constitutional right to privacy under Article 21, affirmed as a fundamental right by the nine-judge bench in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India. Puttaswamy establishes that privacy includes informational and decisional autonomy — the ability to control how one's identity is used. That principle is the constitutional hook for personality-rights claims; without it, personality rights would rest on common-law grounds alone.

The second is the tort of passing off from trade mark law. Passing off protects commercial goodwill associated with a mark or indicium of origin. Courts have extended this reasoning to well-known individuals whose name, image, or likeness functions as a commercial signifier — use of that signifier by another, in a manner that suggests endorsement or association, is passing off regardless of formal trade mark registration.

The third is the privacy-adjacent common-law principle articulated in R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu (the Auto Shankar case) — that a person has a right to protect his or her private life, including the right not to have identity published or used without consent, subject to the public-interest exception for matters already in the public record. R. Rajagopal is the precedent most often relied on for the constitutional-tort flavour of personality-rights claims.

Key cases and the direction of travel

Three Delhi High Court decisions anchor the commercial personality-rights doctrine.

Titan Industries Ltd. v. Ramkumar Jewellers is the foundational decision for publicity rights in a commercial context. The Delhi High Court, dealing with unauthorised use of Amitabh Bachchan's and Jaya Bachchan's photographs in a jeweller's advertising, recognised that identity has commercial value and its unauthorised use amounts to misappropriation. The case is routinely cited for the proposition that publicity rights are enforceable in India against advertisers who use a celebrity's likeness without release.

Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi & Ors. (Delhi High Court, 2022) granted wide interim injunctive relief protecting Amitabh Bachchan's name, image, voice, and signature attributes against unauthorised commercial use, including in online contexts. The order is one of the clearer modern articulations of personality-rights protection extended across digital media.

Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India & Ors. (Delhi High Court, 2023) extended the doctrine squarely into the AI context. The court granted an injunction against unauthorised use of Anil Kapoor's image, likeness, voice, and signature catchphrase — including AI-generated and morphed content, GIFs, emojis, and deepfakes. The decision is now the leading Indian authority for AI-era personality-rights claims and has been followed in subsequent matters.

What attributes are protected

Indian courts have been willing to protect a relatively broad list of identity attributes where commercial appropriation is made out. These include: name (including stage names and well-known nicknames), facial image and photographs, voice and distinctive vocal patterns, likeness (including in illustrations, cartoons, and AI-generated renderings), signature, physical gestures and mannerisms, and in some cases catchphrases and identifiable roles — where the attribute has become commercially associated with the person.

What the courts have not extended, and will not lightly extend, is protection over non-commercial uses — commentary, criticism, satire, news reporting, and genuinely editorial material retain the usual constitutional protections. Personality-rights doctrine is a shield against commercial appropriation, not a tool for suppressing speech. The line between commercial use and editorial use is fact-specific and argued on a case-by-case basis.

The AI-era variants

Four variants of personality-rights infringement now dominate litigation.

Deepfake videos — synthetically generated clips that place a real person in a fabricated scene, typically for promotional, political, or defamatory purposes. Courts have issued takedown orders under personality-rights and privacy reasoning, often combined with IT Act provisions against obscene or morphed content where the facts warrant.

Voice cloning — AI-generated audio reproducing a person's voice reading advertising copy, narration, or political content. The Anil Kapoor judgment explicitly covered voice-cloning scenarios, and the reasoning applies equally to other public figures whose voice is recognisable. For independent artists and voice actors whose voice is their commercial asset, voice cloning is a direct misappropriation of their working instrument.

Image morphing and face-swapping — still or moving images placing a person's face on another body, typically for obscene or defamatory ends. The remedy usually pairs personality-rights injunction with IT Act provisions on obscene content and Section 67/67A-equivalent provisions where the content is sexually explicit.

AI-generated likeness merchandise — AI-produced images of celebrities or public figures used on merchandise, NFTs, or in digital art marketplaces without licence. The doctrinal treatment is the same as ordinary publicity-rights cases; the AI generation does not immunise the use.

Remedies and enforcement

The primary remedy is the injunction — interim, ex parte where urgency demands it, and final after trial. Ex parte injunctions have been granted in personality-rights cases where the content is ongoing, widely disseminated, and likely to cause irreparable reputational harm. Mandatory takedown orders against platforms and intermediaries are routinely framed into the interim relief. John Doe orders — against unknown infringers — have been issued in cases where the content is spreading faster than identification.

Damages are granted but are historically modest in Indian personality-rights practice compared with US publicity-rights actions. The quantum depends on commercial value of the identity, extent of the infringement, and the nature of the harm (reputational, commercial, or both). Damages of a more significant order have been seen in passing-off cases where evidence of diverted business is clear; purely personality-rights damages claims without clear commercial-loss evidence remain more modest.

Parallel criminal provisions may apply. Section 500 IPC/Section 356 BNS for defamation, Section 67/67A of the IT Act for obscene or sexually explicit content, and Sections of the BNS covering outraging modesty or criminal intimidation, depending on the facts. These are adjuncts to, not replacements for, the civil personality-rights action.

What to do if your identity has been misappropriated

Preserve evidence before anything else — screenshots, URLs, timestamps, platform records. Identify the form of use: is it advertising, merchandise, deepfake, voice-clone, morph, or AI-generated likeness? Identify who is responsible — the creator, the advertiser, the brand, or the platform. Each layer has distinct remedies.

Draft a calibrated cease-and-desist as the first step where the infringer is identifiable and the commercial relationship matters. Where the content is spreading or the infringer is an unknown actor, injunction proceedings in the Delhi High Court are often the faster path — the court's familiarity with personality-rights doctrine and its willingness to grant interim and John Doe relief make it the default forum for matters of this kind. Include takedown directions against specified platforms in the prayer.

For independent creators and musicians whose voice or image has been used by a brand without release, the objective is usually threefold: immediate takedown, retrospective licence or settlement, and a public acknowledgment or credited resolution that strengthens the creator's hand in future brand negotiations. Pure damages claims tend to generate more expense than return; structured settlement is often the better outcome.

Authored by Vikram Singh Kushwaha, Advocate practising before the Supreme Court of India and the Delhi High Court. The practice handles personality rights, publicity rights, and unauthorised-use disputes for actors, artists, musicians, and public figures, including AI-era deepfake and voice-clone matters.