A remit too wide: Personality rights without a rulebook

Celebrity actors, singers, and even sportspersons, are rushing to court to stop the unauthorised use of their name, face, voice or likeness.

- Aparajita Lath

The surge in these “personality rights” cases has coincided with two developments: the rise of social media and the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Deepfakes, AI-generated voices, manipulated images and viral memes have made it easier to reproduce and remix a public figure's identity.

While the government has recently issued AI Governance Guidelines to address some of these concerns, we are already witnessing the emergence of a new kind of private ordering of rights through celebrity-led personality rights cases. The Delhi High Court's directives to social media firms to protect cricketer Sunil Gavaskar's and Andhra Pradesh deputy chief minister Pawan Kalyan’s personality rights are recent instances of this.

Celebrities argue that new technologies pose risks to their reputation, privacy and livelihoods. At first glance, these concerns appear reasonable. The law must provide remedies for defamation, obscene portrayals and material deception of the public. In fact, the law already does so for each of these harms. For example, actions for defamation lie under both civil and criminal laws; impersonation through deepfakes can be regulated under provisions of the Information Technology Act and Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS); and selling, circulating obscene material is punishable under the BNS. Still, rather than invoking existing laws, celebrities and courts are fashioning new “personality rights” without clear benchmarks for assessing harm or misuse.