Personality Rights In The Era Of Deepfakes And Synthetic Media

Abstract

Deepfakes and synthetic media erase the old boundary between representation and reality. When anyone can generate a video of you saying or doing something you never did, the legal question becomes: who owns your persona and who protects it? This piece explains what "personality rights" mean in practice, examines recent Indian litigation involving Bollywood personalities, compares how other jurisdictions are reacting, highlights gaps in Indian law, and sets out concrete, realistic reforms for doctrine, platforms, and courts.

Introduction

Here's the blunt point that your face, voice, and likeness are now replicable commodities. Advances in generative AI let bad actors and sometimes well-meaning creators produce convincing videos, audio, and images that mimic a person's identity. For celebrities the harms are reputational and commercial; for ordinary people they can be intimate, dangerous, or criminal. Law has to decide three things fast: (1) what legal