The plaintiff, a well-known film actor, found his name, voice, image, dialogue and catchphrases being exploited by numerous unrelated parties, including through AI tools used to generate deepfake audio, video and morphed content, and false endorsements.
Whether existing personality-rights protection extends to misuse enabled by AI tools such as deepfakes and voice cloning, and whether an omnibus injunction can cover future, yet-unknown misuse of this kind.
The Court granted a sweeping ex-parte injunction restraining the named defendants and the world at large from using the plaintiff's name, image, voice or likeness through any means, explicitly including AI, face-morphing and GIFs, for commercial gain.
The Court recognised that widely available AI tools materially lower the barrier to convincing impersonation, and that personality-rights protection must expressly account for this — grounding the reasoning in Articles 19(2) and 21 of the Constitution.
Regarded as India's leading judicial statement to date on personality rights in the age of generative AI, and the reference point for the personality-rights and digital-identity practice area on this website.
