The emergence of artificial intelligence, deepfakes, voice cloning and digital impersonation has increased the unauthorised use of individuals’ identities. Recent cases involving celebrities such as Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor and Jackie Shroff have brought personality rights into renewed focus.
Personality rights safeguard an individual’s name, likeness, image, voice, signature, and other distinctive traits from unauthorised commercial exploitation.

Meaning

Personality rights are legal safeguards that protect an individual’s identity from being misused without consent. These rights allow people, especially public figures, to control how their name, image, voice, or distinctive traits are used in public or for commercial purposes.
- These rights are especially relevant for public figures like famous actors, athletes, and other influential people since their name is worth a lot of money.
They are often divided into two areas:
- Right of publicity: Prevents unauthorised commercial exploitation of a person’s attributes, such as using a celebrity’s face in advertisements without approval
- Right to privacy: Shields an individual from unwanted exposure or misrepresentation of their personal life or persona
The Delhi High Court has said the unauthorised exploitation of the attributes of an individual’s personality may have two facets – violation of their right to protect their personality attributes from being commercially exploited and violation of their “right to privacy”, which in turn leads to undermining their “right to live with dignity”.

Specific Protected Aspects of Identity

Name & Image: Unauthorized use on merchandise or movie titles (e.g., Karan Johar’s objection to his name in film titles).
Voice and Likeness: AI sound-alikes and morphed audiovisual content.
Catchphrases: Distinctive personal expressions, such as Anil Kapoor’s ‘Jhakaas’.

Celebrities who have sought legal protection

Abhishek Bachchan (2025): He approached the Delhi High Court seeking protection of his publicity and personality rights. He had urged the court to restrain websites and platforms from misusing his identity, including creating fake or sexually explicit content with his likeness.
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (2025): She moved the Delhi High Court after her image was misused by a firm claiming her as its chairperson. The court agreed to issue orders against unauthorised use of her persona.
Jackie Shroff (2024): The court ordered the removal of videos mocking him under titles like "Jackie Shroff is Savage" and "Thug Life".
Rajat Sharma (2024): The journalist received protection against deepfake manipulation and fake drug endorsements.
Mohan Babu (2024): The Delhi High Court restrained AI chatbots, social media platforms, and e-commerce sites from using his name or voice without permission.
Anil Kapoor (2023): He secured protection against misuse of his dialogues and catchphrases such as “Jhakaas” and “Mr. India”.
Amitabh Bachchan (2022): The Delhi High Court stopped the unauthorised use of his name, voice, and image.
Rajinikanth (2015): The Madras High Court restrained the release of Main Hoon Rajinikanth, which used his name and style without approval.

Importance of Personality Rights

Protection of Human Dignity
- Control over one’s identity, image and voice is an essential component of dignity and personal autonomy under Article 21
Protection of Privacy
- These rights prevent individuals from being exposed, represented or commercially exploited without their consent
Protection of Reputation
- They provide remedies against morphed images, obscene deepfakes, fabricated statements and other representations that may damage a person’s social standing
  - A fake video or an AI-cloned voice of the actors spreads within hours, damaging their reputations and misleading audiences.
    - Unauthorized replicas risk severe economic and career damage if used for defamatory, offensive, or fraudulent purposes
Prevention of Unjust Enrichment
- Businesses cannot profit from the reputation and goodwill created through another person’s skill, labour and achievements
Protection of Livelihood
- Endorsements, performances and licensing of identity are important sources of income for actors, artists, sportspersons and digital creators
  - High-profile cases such as unauthorized AI songs mimicking artists like Drake, Taylor Swift, or Bollywood playback singer Arijit Singh demonstrate how easily technology can bypass traditional licensing.
Protection of Democratic Discourse
- Personality rights can prevent the unauthorised use of celebrities’ images or voices in manipulated political content, which may mislead voters and influence public opinion.
Consumer Protection
- Preventing false endorsements protects consumers from being deceived into believing that a trusted individual supports a particular product or service
Protection against AI Misuse
- Personality rights provide a legal basis for challenging deepfakes, cloned voices, digitally altered images and AI-generated impersonation
Promotion of Individual Agency
- Individuals retain control over how, where and for what purposes their identities are represented

Legal Framework

Though not codified in a single statute, personality rights in India are grounded in common law doctrines of privacy, defamation, and publicity rights, and reinforced through judicial precedents. Courts may grant injunctions, award damages, or issue takedown orders to curb misuse in advertisements, merchandise, AI-generated content, or digital platforms.

Article 21: Personality rights derive from the rights to privacy, dignity, autonomy and reputation guaranteed as components of the right to life and personal liberty
Article 19(1)(a): Personality rights must be balanced with freedom of speech and expression, particularly in cases involving journalism, satire, criticism, biographies and matters of public interest
Statutory protection is dispersed across intellectual property laws.
- The Copyright Act, 1957, grants performers both exclusive rights under Section 38A and moral rights under Section 38B, allowing them to control how their performances are reproduced and to object to any distortion or misuse.
- The Trade Marks Act, 1999, permits individuals, particularly celebrities, to register distinctive attributes of their persona, such as names, signatures, or even catchphrases, as trademarks.
  - For instance, actors such as Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Ajay Devgn, and Amitabh Bachchan have registered their names as trademarks.
- Torts and passing off
  - It prevents others from using a person’s identity to falsely suggest that they endorse a product.
    - Passing off means “no one has the right to represent his goods in the name of another person.”
  - The Trademark law recognises the Tort of Passing off. To earn the benefit of passing off, the plaintiff has to prove misrepresentation of his personality trait and what damages have been done to him because of using personality traits. Section 27 of the Trademark Act refers to ‘passing off’.

Challenges

Absence of a Specific Law
- India does not have dedicated legislation defining the scope, duration, infringement and remedies associated with personality rights
Fragmented Legal Framework
- Protection is scattered across constitutional law, copyright law, trademark law, defamation, passing off and information technology law, creating legal uncertainty
Unclear Scope of Protection
- There is no uniform standard to determine which attributes—such as names, voices, gestures, mannerisms and catchphrases—qualify for protection
Celebrity-Centric Jurisprudence
- Personality rights have largely evolved through cases involving celebrities, leaving their application to ordinary individuals uncertain
  - The Celebrity Premium: In common law jurisdictions, the right to prevent identity exploitation has evolved almost entirely through celebrity court cases, grounding protection in commercial worth, endorsement capabilities, and brand market value. To win a traditional publicity rights suit, a plaintiff must prove their “celebrity status” and that the defendant acted for “commercial gain”.
  - No Remedy for Ordinary Citizens: Because legal frameworks focus on commercial brand value, non-celebrities and private individuals lack doctrinally clear remedies under current laws.
  - Asymmetrical Harms: Everyday citizens are highly vulnerable to non-commercial digital harms—such as non-consensual deepfake pornography, online harassment, and identity theft. These dignity-based violations often cause emotional and reputational damage that far exceeds the economic losses experienced by public figures, yet the law fails to protect ordinary people equally
Rise of Generative AI
- Deepfakes, voice cloning and face morphing enable the realistic and large-scale misuse of an individual’s identity at minimal cost
Conflict with Freedom of Expression
- Excessive protection may restrict journalism, satire, parody, criticism, biographies, fan art and other expression protected under Article 19(1)(a)
- Overemphasizing publicity rights risks “chilling” democratic expression and eliminating entire genres of creative output
Difficulty in Determining Infringement
- Courts must distinguish between the unlawful appropriation of an identity and its legitimate, incidental or transformative use
Posthumous Rights
- It remains unclear whether personality rights survive a person’s death, whether they can be inherited and how long legal heirs may enforce them
  - In Krishna Kishore Singh v Sarla A. Saraogi (2021), concerning a film allegedly based on Sushant Singh Rajput, the Delhi High Court held that privacy, publicity and personality rights are not heritable and extinguish upon the person’s death.
Superstar Economics vs. Grassroots Livelihoods
- The expansion of personality rights may disproportionately protect the commercial interests of celebrities while adversely affecting small creators, artisans and informal merchandise sellers who depend on popular culture for their livelihoods.
  - Aggressive litigation against small-scale vendors selling posters or mugs can destroy livelihoods, even when there is no evidence of “audience confusion” or “bad faith” to mislead.
    - The expansion of publicity rights frequently operates within the “economics of superstars”, where dominant market figures shape legal frameworks to further entrench their own financial monopoly. While celebrities claim a “loss of livelihood,” they are rarely struggling for basic daily needs; instead, these aggressive injunctions actively dent the livelihoods of small-scale creative workers and informal merchandise sellers
Judicial Ad-Hocism & Ex-Parte Injunctions
- Personality-rights disputes are often decided through case-specific and insufficiently reasoned orders, driven by an instinct to protect celebrities rather than the consistent application of constitutional principles.
- Most orders do not clearly discuss the context of use and no consistent or objective standard has yet emerged.
- Many rulings are characterized by poor legal reasoning and are delivered ex parte (without hearing the defending party). This trend sidesteps comprehensive constitutional analysis regarding free speech and public domain limits
The Vague “Negative Light” Standard
- What constitutes “negative” remains undefined. While certain uses, such as obscene or pornographic depictions, may be “negative”, the boundaries beyond that can be vague.
  - Courts have allowed celebrities to block third parties from using AI or creating simple GIFs because they portray the stars in a “negative light”. What constitutes “negative” remains entirely undefined and subjective

Comparison: Grounds for Judicial Restraint

Legitimate Ground for Restraint	Illegitimate Ground for Restraint
Defamation: Lowering reputation through falsehood.	Mere Use: Unauthorized use for admiration or tribute.
False Endorsement: Misleading the public for profit.	Parody/Satire: Creative lampooning or critical commentary.
Obscenity: Pornographic or obscene depictions.	Public Record Exception: Use of information in the public domain.
Commercial Misuse: Direct trade diversion via deception.	Informational Reporting: News, books, and current event commentary.

Jurisprudence

R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu (1994)
- The "Public-Record Exception": The Supreme Court carved out a critical limit to privacy claims, establishing that any information forming part of the public record can be lawfully published or commented upon
Tata Sons v. Greenpeace International (2011)
- The Delhi High Court refused to grant an injunction to Tata Sons over a Pac-Man-style game created by Greenpeace that depicted the corporate logo "eating" endangered Olive Ridley turtles. The court agreed that raising awareness about the environmental impact of a port project was a protected act of public interest
  - The Bench agreed that the game's purpose was to raise awareness about the environmental impact of the Dhamra Port project in Odisha, in which the Tata Group was a partner.
Bata India Ltd v. Prakash Jha Productions (2012)
- The Supreme Court permitted a movie song to use corporate names (including Bata, Tata, Birla, and Ambani) to critically critique rising inflation and societal inequality, merely requiring a disclaimer explaining that the names were used purely as examples
D.M. Entertainment v. Baby Gift House (2010)
- The Delhi High Court restrained the unauthorised commercial use of singer Daler Mehndi’s persona through dolls, recognising such use as a violation of his publicity rights and an act of passing off.
  - The Court explicitly warned that overprotecting a celebrity's publicity rights risks creating a chilling effect on free speech, noting that in a democratic society, over-emphasis on fame would wipe out entire genres of creative expression for the general public
K.S. Puttaswamy v Union of India (2017)
- The Supreme Court recognised privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21, strengthening the constitutional foundation of an individual’s control over personal identity and information
Digital Collectibles v. Galactus Funware Technology (2023)
- The Delhi High Court ruled that utilizing a celebrity’s name, image, or likeness for lampooning, satire, parodies, art, scholarship, music, academics, and news is fully protected and does not constitute an infringement of publicity rights
Anil Kapoor v Simply Life India (2023)
- The Delhi High Court granted actor Anil Kapoor wide-ranging protection over his personality rights, restraining 16 online entities from exploiting his name, image, voice, likeness, or his catchphrase “jhakaas,” which he popularised in films.
- Justice Prathiba Singh clarified that free speech extends to “genuine write-ups, parody, satires and criticism” but cannot be stretched to justify commercial exploitation. She cautioned that when such use “crosses the line and results in tarnishing, blackening or jeopardising the individual’s personality and elements associated with them, it would be illegal.” Referring to morphed images of the actor with other actresses, she said this was “not merely offensive” to him but also to third parties, adding that the court “can’t turn a blind eye to such misuse,” particularly where dilution and tarnishment are actionable torts.
Amitabh Bachchan v Rajat Nagi (2022)
- The Delhi High Court restrained the unauthorised commercial use of Amitabh Bachchan’s name, image, voice and other distinctive personality attributes, including their misuse through fake websites and digital platforms
Jaikishan Saraf v. Peppy Stores (2024)
- The Delhi High Court protected the personality and publicity rights of actor Jackie Shroff, restraining e-commerce platforms and AI chatbots from misusing his name, image, voice, and likeness without consent. The court observed that the “unauthorised use of these characteristics for commercial purposes not only infringes upon these rights but also dilutes the brand equity painstakingly built by the plaintiff over the years.”

Way Forward

Comprehensive Legislation: Parliament should enact a dedicated and technology-neutral law defining personality rights, protected attributes, infringement, exceptions and available remedies
Free-Speech Exceptions: Bona fide journalism, criticism, parody, satire, scholarship, artistic expression and discussion of matters of public interest should receive explicit protection
- Any future law must carefully calibrate personality rights against free speech, satire/parody, and public interest
Proportionate Injunctions: Courts should target identified infringing content instead of granting vague or excessively broad control over common words, gestures and expressions
Clarity on Posthumous Rights: The law should determine whether personality rights are inheritable, prescribe their duration after death and identify who may enforce them
Authoritative Supreme Court Guidelines: The Supreme Court should lay down a uniform framework defining the scope and limitations of personality rights and establish clear tests for balancing them with freedom of expression, artistic creativity and public interest.
Dedicated Framework against Deepfakes: India should enact a targeted statutory framework to prohibit malicious deepfakes and mandate clear disclosure or labelling of legitimately generated synthetic content, drawing lessons from the European Union’s AI Act
Platform Accountability: Digital platforms should be required to promptly identify, label and remove harmful manipulated content while preserving evidence for investigation and providing safeguards for legitimate artistic or satirical use

As technology increasingly blurs the line between authentic and manipulated identities, personality rights have become essential for protecting individual dignity, autonomy and reputation. However, their expansion must not create an excessive monopoly over public expression. India, therefore, needs a clear and balanced legal framework that protects individuals from exploitation while preserving free speech, creativity and the public interest.

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