Personality rights protection is easy to order but hard to enforce, experts say

Actors Hrithik Roshan, Akshay Kumar, Suniel Shetty, Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, and director Karan Johar have approached various high courts in recent months over the unauthorised use and commercial exploitation of their image and personality rights online (everything from their names and catchphrases to their images and even signature traits), including through AI-generated deepfakes. In doing so, they joined Bollywood actors Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, and Jackie Shroff, and playback singers Kumar Sanu, Asha Bhosale and Arijit Singh.

‘Real work starts now’

But the speed at which content spreads online makes it difficult if not impossible to monitor websites for every instance of unauthorised use, even with an injunction in place, experts said, adding that the burden of finding and reporting new infringements usually falls on the individual. They also pointed out that monitoring high-traffic websites was no easy task, and that Indian courts had no jurisdiction over websites hosted abroad.

“Getting an order is the easy part—the real work starts after the injunction is granted,” said Rahul Hingmire, managing partner at Vis Legis Law Practice. “Court orders don’t ensure compliance; they must be actively communicated to every intermediary—social media platforms, ISPs (internet service providers), digital advertisers, and PR (public relations) agencies.”

At the heart of the matter are a slew of rogue websites that misuse celebrities’ images and other attributes without their permission for commercial gain. In many instances, celebrities have alleged that these websites have hosted objectionable, AI-generated content featuring their likeness, thus damaging their reputation.

Under Indian law, personality rights protect an individual’s name, likeness, image, voice, signature, or other identifiable aspects of their persona from unauthorised commercial exploitation. These rights are not explicitly codified but are recognised through common law principles of privacy, defamation and the right to publicity, and have been reinforced by judicial precedents. Courts can grant injunctions, damages, or takedown orders to prevent misuse in ads, merchandise, AI-generated content, or online platforms.

The Delhi High Court’s 2023 injunction in the matter of Anil Kapoor vs Simply Life India & Ors strongly affirmed this principle, restraining unauthorised use of the actor’s name, image, voice, gestures, and catchphrases for commercial gains like merchandise, ringtones, and AI-generated deepfakes.

A sporting chance

Talking about the difficulty in enforcing such injunctions, Mihir Rale, partner & co-head, digital, tech, media, telecom at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, drew a comparison with live sports piracy – illegally streaming, recording, or sharing live sports events without the permission of the official broadcaster or rights holder. Enforcement of orders against such illegal sites remains a challenge in India. “Dynamic injunctions can be powerful, but monitoring and discovery remain major hurdles,” Rale said, “as the damage tends to occur before any takedown is carried out”.

However, technology is catching up with illegal streamers. Movie studios and television networks, as well as individual celebrities such as Taylor Swift are harnessing digital fingerprinting tools to claim and monetise uses of their image or content online.

“The Indian Premier League, for instance, harnesses YouTube’s Content ID and Meta’s Rights Manager to block unauthorised live streams within minutes. These tools are now being extended to protect individual celebrities as well,” said Hingmire of Vis Legis Law Practice.

YouTube’s Content ID is an automated digital fingerprinting system designed to help copyright owners easily identify and manage their intellectual property on the platform. Rights holders submit a ‘reference file’ (audio or visual) of their original content, which the system then scans against every newly uploaded video. When a match is found, Content ID automatically issues a claim, allowing the rights holder either monetise the video (by collecting ad revenue from it), track its viewership data, or block it entirely. Meta’s Rights Manager is a comparable rights management tool used across Meta platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.

Swift has frequently opted to monetise videos containing her music, which supports fan creativity while also generating income. This is a common approach for many artists, as it’s a more collaborative and less adversarial strategy than an outright ban.

A spokesperson for YouTube said, “Recently, we announced that we would soon be expanding our likeness detection tool, which allows creators to detect and manage videos made with AI using their facial likeness, to all YouTube Partner Program creators in an open beta.

“Likeness detection works similarly to Content ID, except that it searches for a person’s likeness rather than copyrighted audio and video content. In this experimental phase, the feature may display videos featuring your actual face, not altered or synthetic versions.”

Practical solutions

Ankit Sahni, partner, Ajay Sahni & Associates, said, “No team can police every misuse at internet speed. The practical approach is to prioritise high-impact violations such as fake endorsements, sexually explicit deepfakes, and impersonations that cause reputational or financial harm, while using platform tools and targeted monitoring. Systemic fixes are essential, including KYC-backed accountability, better AI detection by platforms, and swift injunctive and contempt remedies.”

Rale of Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas proposed a multi-pronged strategy for meaningful enforcement: engaging monitoring firms, deploying trained resources, focusing on high-traffic platforms, and forming an artists’ collective for relentless, coordinated enforcement. “While the law may set boundaries, only vigilance and coordinated enforcement can protect identity in the age of AI,” he said.

A senior partner at a rival firm, who did not wish to be named, said, “Whenever there is offending content and a party has a court injunction, they can ask the department of telecom or the ministry of electronics and information technology to direct ISPs and telecom service providers to take down the content. These intermediaries are obliged to comply with such orders.”

However, he added, platforms based outside India may not take down such content globally, and merely block access to it from India (geoblocking). And platforms that don’t have a significant presence in India may not even act upon such directions, he added.