Personality rights: A new legal frontier in the age of AI
In the rapidly evolving era of Artificial Intelligence, Personality Rights have emerged as a vital legal safeguard for natural persons, especially for individuals whose image, likeness, voice, and overall persona hold commercial, artistic, or public significance. Every person is unique and so is their personality .But over time, a few work on it to become a persona which is larger than life like image in the society. This mainly happens with Celebrities and Sports persons and Important persons from various fields of work.
With this limelight and fame comes Technology where in proliferation of AI-generated content, deepfakes, and digital recreations, the unauthorized use of an individual’s personality attributes are become a pressing concern. Technology moves faster than Law and its takes time for Law to catch up. But , with the recent incidences of so many leading film personalities — including Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, Asha Bhosle, and Akshay Kumar being the recent One seeking immediate stay from Bombay High Court and banning of the usage of his personality image for any commercial gains to prevent unauthorized exploitation of their persona through digital or AI-enabled means in the court of law is setting up a beautiful jurisprudence to mitigate this menace. These landmark cases are expected to shape the future framework of personality rights enforcement in India with AI and Deepfakes and other Tech driven augmentation.
Personality Rights empower individuals to maintain control over the commercial and ethical use of their identity in both traditional and digital media. Personality rights encompass Public and Private. The Publicity rights focus on commercial exploitation with our prior consent and Private rights intrudes privacy of an Individual.
With law catching up with Technology , the protection of personality rights is mainly confined to celebrities now but can be enforced by a famed and renowned natural person, when their persona is used in media, advertisements, or AI-generated environments for unlawful gains and derogatory outcomes.
As India continues its digital transformation, establishing a robust legal and ethical framework to protect personal identity and dignity in the age of artificial intelligence remains a critical priority. The recognition of Personality Rights marks a progressive step toward ensuring fairness, accountability, and respect for human individuality in the digital realm. To conclude, Personality Rights is your own brand Image and Signature style which is a Natural IP which needs recognition and protection.
(The writer is CEO of Resolute IP Services LLP & Head-Legal, Resolute Group)