Celebrity Personality Rights Against AI Exploitation

Introduction

With great power, comes great responsibility. This saying holds particularly true in the context of AI technology which is indeed a double-edged sword. Nothing as revolutionary as AI technology comes without significant potential for misuse. The present article aims to shed light on the perils of the use of AI and deepfake technology in the context of celebrities, political figures and their personality rights, focusing specifically on how India has risen to the challenge of tackling the problem through judicial precedents despite several lacunae that exist from a statutory perspective.

The term 'deepfake' has been derived from the terms 'deep learning' and 'fake' and is essentially used to describe artificial media created using data manipulation. Recently, the internet has seen a boom in deepfakes created using celebrities' images, voices or both, mainly due to the ease of access to the necessary data in the public domain.