FROM SCIENCE FICTION TO REALITY: AI CLONING AND CELEBRITY IDENTITY CLASH

By the 2010s, the once-hypothetical ability to clone a public figure was becoming technically feasible. Advances in visual effects allowed filmmakers to resurrect or de-age actors on screen. For example, films like Rogue One (2016) featured a convincing digital recreation of Peter Cushing (who had passed away) reprising his 1977 role, and used a youthful CGI Carrie Fisher — a kind of cinematic time travel via pixels.

- TDG NETWORK

In 2013, the sci-fi film The Congress imagined a startling contract: a fading actress sells the rights to her digital self, allowing Hollywood to use her lifelike avatar in any future film.

The studio in the film vows to “scan and own [her] likeness, forever,” creating a digital clone that never ages, never demands pay, and can endlessly generate revenue. What seemed like a surreal cautionary tale a decade ago has since edged into reality. Today, powerful AI tools can mimic a celebrity's face and voice with eerie precision, and entertainment studios have flirted with using digital replicas of actors. Meanwhile, celebrities from film stars to singers are rushing to courts to protect their personality rights from unauthorised AI-generated imitations. This convergence of technology, culture, and law raises urgent questions: How did we get here? Is the technology itself the culprit, or the way it’s used? And how are societies - especially India’s - responding to the challenge of AI-driven celebrity cloning?

Long before advanced AI, storytellers worried about human stars in a digital future. Michael Crichton’s Looker (1981) imagined a company scanning fashion models to build flawless 3D doubles for ads—and even plotting to eliminate the real women to hide the ruse. The film wasn't a hit, but it was prophetic: computer-made stand-ins rendering performers disposable, corporations owning a person's likeness indefinitely, and inserting them anywhere at will. Audiences in 1981 found it far-fetched; history didn’t.