Why stars are turning to courts for personality rights

Not long ago, the idea that a person's style, voice, or even a famous mannerism could need legal protection might have seemed far-fetched.

- Shruti Kakkar

But a wave of recent litigation by film figures including Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Karan Johar and Nagarjuna reflects a significant shift in legal discourse. These celebrities have pressed the Delhi high court to acknowledge and enforce personality rights, underscoring the growing recognition of identity as a valuable legal asset in the digital age.

The surge in personality rights litigation in today's artificial intelligence (AI)-driven environment is largely attributable to the increasing misuse of celebrities’ personas by various unidentified entities, all of which can inflict significant reputational damage and unwarranted ridicule.

While most of the celebrities, including Aishwarya and Abhishek, sought protection of this right by restraining various entities from misusing their persona through unauthorised sale of merchandise, dissemination of obscene, defamatory, or manipulated content through technologies such as deepfakes, and the creation of AI-generated chatbots, Johar also requested the removal of derogatory and obscene posts, as well as social media posts containing profanity and slurs.

In Johar’s case, Meta (which operates platforms such as Instagram and Facebook) and Google opposed the takedown, arguing that some of the contested content constituted caricature, lampooning, satire, and parody. They contended that these forms of expression are recognised exceptions to the enforcement of personality rights, and that granting the relief could potentially open the floodgates to extensive litigation. Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora, despite the opposition, directed these social media intermediaries to take down more than 100 URLs, concluding that unauthorised use of a celebrity's persona for creating obscene memes, social media posts, and videos tarnishes their goodwill.