Personality Rights in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: The Delhi High Court’s Injunction in Raj Shamani v. John Doe and the Emerging Jurisprudence of Identity Protection in the Creator Economy
By Guru Legal
Keywords: personality rights; right to privacy; Article 21 Constitution of India, 1950; deepfake; artificial intelligence; Delhi High Court; injunction; passing off; Trade Marks Act, 1999; Information Technology Act, 2000; Section 66E; John Doe order; creator economy; digital identity; unauthorised commercial exploitation; parody and satire; right to publicity
Abstract
The protection of personality rights, encompassing a natural person’s name, likeness, image, voice, and distinctive persona, has emerged as one of the most rapidly evolving areas of Indian intellectual property and constitutional jurisprudence, driven by the proliferation of digital platforms, the rise of the creator economy, and the increasingly sophisticated deployment of artificial intelligence to generate deceptive content that appropriates and commercially exploits the identities of public figures. The High Court of Judicature at Delhi (hereinafter, the Delhi High Court) has, in recent years, established itself as the leading forum in India for the adjudication of personality rights disputes, granting injunctive relief to a growing number of public figures including Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Rajat Sharma, and spiritual leaders Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and Jaggi Vasudev against various forms of unauthorised exploitation of their identities. The most recent significant addition to this jurisprudence is the interim order granted by Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora in the suit filed by podcaster and entrepreneur Raj Shamani before the Delhi High Court, directing the takedown of artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes, the removal of fake chatbots and unauthorised Telegram accounts impersonating Shamani, and the restraint of the unauthorised commercial exploitation of his name, image, and persona, while declining at this stage to issue an injunction against parody and satire content. This article examines the constitutional and statutory foundations of personality rights in India, analyses the doctrinal principles established in the Raj Shamani order and related decisions of the Delhi High Court, identifies the structural gaps in the existing legislative framework, and advances recommendations for reform.
Introduction
The right to control one’s own identity, and in particular the right to prevent others from commercially exploiting one’s name, image, voice, or persona without consent, has a history in Indian law that predates the digital age but has acquired an entirely new dimension in the era of social media, influencer culture, and generative artificial intelligence. The constitutional basis for the protection of personality rights in India is grounded in the right to privacy and the right to live with dignity, both of which have been recognised by the Supreme Court of India as essential components of the right to life and personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution of India, 1950 (hereinafter, the Constitution). The landmark judgment in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1, which recognised the right to privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21, provides the constitutional foundation for the protection of a person’s identity against unauthorised use and exploitation.
The commercial and dignitary dimensions of personality rights have, however, long been recognised in Indian law through a variety of statutory and common law mechanisms, including the law of passing off, the provisions of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 (hereinafter, the Trade Marks Act) governing the use of personal names as trade marks, the copyright protections available to performers under the Copyright Act, 1957 (hereinafter, the Copyright Act), and the civil and criminal liability for defamation under the general law. The rapid growth of the creator economy in India, in which public figures and social media influencers derive substantial commercial value from their identity and persona, has significantly expanded the commercial stakes of personality rights disputes and has created new categories of harm, including the use of artificial intelligence to generate deepfakes that appropriate a person’s voice, face, and mannerisms for deceptive or commercial purposes, and the creation of fake chatbots that impersonate public figures to mislead their followers and, in some instances, to solicit money from unsuspecting members of the public.
The suit filed by Raj Shamani, a prominent podcaster and entrepreneur known for his show Figuring Out, before the Delhi High Court, represents a significant escalation of personality rights litigation in India in the context of artificial intelligence-generated content. Shamani’s suit sought protection against multiple vectors of misuse of his identity, including deepfake videos depicting him as promoting services, fake endorsements including those allegedly run by entities such as Tax Buddy, unauthorised Telegram chatbots impersonating him to solicit queries and funds linked to cryptocurrency schemes, and obscene content recycling his material to drive traffic using his name as a hashtag. The interim order granted by Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora, which directed the takedown of artificial intelligence-generated content and the removal of fake chatbots while declining at this stage to enjoin parody and satire, reflects a principled attempt to balance the protection of personality rights against the constitutional protection of free expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.
Constitutional and Statutory Foundations of Personality Rights in India
The constitutional foundation of personality rights in India rests primarily upon Articles 19(1)(a) and 21 of the Constitution of India, 1950. Article 21 has been progressively interpreted by the Supreme Court of India to encompass not only the bare right to life but also the right to live with dignity and privacy, as affirmed in the landmark judgment of Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1. The Puttaswamy judgment recognised that an individual’s autonomy over personal information, including information relating to identity, appearance, and persona, is protected as a facet of the fundamental right to privacy, and that the State and private actors alike are subject to a constitutional obligation to respect this autonomy. The right to control one’s own identity and to prevent others from appropriating it for commercial purposes without consent is, it is submitted, an integral component of the right to privacy so recognised.
The statutory framework for the protection of personality rights in India is distributed across several enactments. The Trade Marks Act, 1999 provides protection against the unauthorised use of a person’s name or likeness as a trade mark under Section 14, which prohibits the registration of a mark that consists of or contains a name that identifies a living person without that person’s consent. The Copyright Act, 1957 confers performer’s rights upon persons who perform in any work, including rights to reproduction, broadcast, and communication to the public under Sections 38 and 38A, and these rights are directly relevant to cases in which a public figure’s voice or performance is replicated without consent. The Information Technology Act, 2000 (hereinafter, the IT Act) and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 impose obligations upon intermediaries to take down content that violates a person’s privacy or that constitutes impersonation, upon receipt of a complaint by the aggrieved person, under Rule 3(1)(b) of the 2021 Rules.
The law of passing off, which is part of the common law as applied in India and is codified in part in Sections 27 and 29 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999, provides an additional remedy for persons whose name, image, or persona is used in a manner likely to cause the public to believe that the person has endorsed or is associated with the goods or services in question. The Delhi High Court has applied passing off principles to personality rights cases in several decisions, including in Titan Industries Ltd. v. Ramkumar Jewellers, (2012) 50 PTC 341, wherein the Court held that the use of a celebrity’s image in advertising without consent constitutes passing off where it creates a false impression of endorsement. These statutory and common law remedies, taken together, provide a multi-layered framework for the protection of personality rights in India, albeit one that is in need of legislative consolidation and updation to address the specific challenges posed by artificial intelligence-generated content.
The Raj Shamani Judgment: Deepfakes, Chatbots, and the Limits of Injunctive Relief
The interim order of Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora in the suit filed by Raj Shamani before the Delhi High Court reflects a careful and pragmatic approach to the adjudication of personality rights disputes in the context of artificial intelligence-generated content, one that is informed by the prior decisions of the Delhi High Court in similar cases and that seeks to balance the competing interests of identity protection and free expression. The order directed the takedown of artificial intelligence-generated deepfake videos that depicted Shamani as endorsing products and services without his consent, the removal of fake chatbots and unauthorised Telegram accounts impersonating Shamani and using his identity to solicit queries and funds from members of the public, and the restraint of the unauthorised commercial exploitation of Shamani’s name, image, and persona on digital platforms and websites. These reliefs were granted on an ex parte basis, consistent with the practice of the Delhi High Court in personality rights cases involving clear and immediate harm to the plaintiff’s identity and commercial interests.
The Court’s decision to decline at this stage to issue an injunction against parody and satire content reflects the importance that Indian courts have placed upon the protection of free expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. The distinction between commercial misappropriation of a person’s identity, which attracts the full force of the law of passing off and personality rights, and satirical or parodic content that comments upon or critiques a public figure in a manner that a reasonable person would recognise as parody, is a constitutionally significant one. The Delhi High Court has, in prior personality rights decisions, including the order in the matter of Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi, (2022) Delhi High Court, noted that parody and satire are protected forms of expression that may not be enjoined merely on the ground that the subject of the parody objects to it, though actionable harm such as defamation or obscenity may warrant separate proceedings. The Raj Shamani order is consistent with this approach, signalling that the Court will not overreach into constitutionally protected expression even as it firmly restrains the commercial and deceptive misappropriation of the plaintiff’s identity.
The grant of John Doe relief in the Raj Shamani matter, enabling dynamic enforcement against unknown infringers as new instances of identity misappropriation are identified, represents an important procedural innovation in Indian personality rights litigation. The John Doe or rolling injunction, first developed in the context of copyright piracy cases and subsequently applied in personality rights cases by the Delhi High Court, allows the plaintiff to enforce injunctive orders against anonymous infringers without the need to identify each infringer before seeking relief. This is of particular practical importance in cases involving digital platforms and social media, where the volume and velocity of infringing content can far outpace the ability of the plaintiff to identify individual infringers and seek separate relief against each of them.
Consequences and Implications for Indian Governance and the Digital Creator Economy
The Delhi High Court’s emerging jurisprudence on personality rights, illustrated by the Raj Shamani order, has significant consequences for the governance of digital platforms, the protection of creators in the influencer economy, and the development of the law of artificial intelligence in India. At the level of platform governance, the decisions of the Delhi High Court have established that digital platforms and intermediaries are expected to cooperate promptly with court orders directing the takedown of deepfakes, fake chatbots, and other artificial intelligence-generated content that violates the personality rights of public figures. This judicial expectation is reinforced by the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, which require intermediaries to acknowledge and act upon complaints of identity misappropriation within prescribed timeframes, and to deploy automated content moderation tools to identify and remove content that violates applicable law.
At the level of legal doctrine, the Raj Shamani order and related decisions of the Delhi High Court are progressively establishing the contours of the Indian law of personality rights in the digital age, identifying the categories of conduct that constitute actionable violations, the forms of relief available to aggrieved persons, and the constitutional limits upon the scope of injunctive orders in cases involving expressive content. The absence of a dedicated statutory framework for personality rights in India, comparable to the right of publicity statutes enacted by several States in the United States of America, means that this doctrinal development is being driven primarily by judicial decision rather than legislative action, a situation that creates both flexibility and uncertainty. The Law Commission of India has not yet addressed the question of personality rights in the digital age in a dedicated report, and there is a pressing need for legislative action to provide a clear, accessible, and comprehensive framework for the protection of personality rights in India.
The Case for Reform: Legislative and Judicial Recommendations
The first area of reform concerns the enactment of a dedicated Personality Rights (Protection and Enforcement) Act in India, consolidating in a single statutory instrument the rights of natural persons in relation to their name, likeness, image, voice, and distinctive persona, and providing clear remedies for infringement including injunctive relief, damages, and account of profits. Such an Act would draw upon the experience of the Delhi High Court’s developing jurisprudence and would provide a statutory basis for the protection of personality rights that is accessible to all persons, not merely those with the resources to engage in complex multi-party intellectual property litigation before the High Court. The Act ought to expressly address the specific challenges posed by artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes, providing that the creation or distribution of artificial intelligence-generated content that misappropriates a person’s identity without consent constitutes a statutory tort entitling the aggrieved person to immediate injunctive relief and damages.
The second area of reform pertains to the amendment of the Information Technology Act, 2000 to introduce specific criminal liability for the creation or distribution of artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes that misappropriate the identity of a natural person for commercial or deceptive purposes. While Section 66E of the IT Act currently penalises the publication of images of private areas of persons without consent, there is no provision specifically addressing the creation of artificial intelligence-generated content that appropriates a person’s face, voice, or persona without consent. It is submitted that a new provision ought to be inserted in the IT Act, or in the proposed amendments thereto, specifically prohibiting the creation and distribution of such content without the consent of the person concerned, with appropriate criminal penalties and civil remedies for violations.
The third area of reform concerns the development of a regulatory framework for platforms that host or distribute artificial intelligence-generated content, requiring such platforms to implement pre-publication verification mechanisms to detect deepfakes and other synthetic media, and to provide effective and accessible complaint mechanisms for persons whose identity has been misappropriated. It is submitted that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology ought to issue guidelines under the IT Act prescribing mandatory technical standards for the detection and labelling of artificial intelligence-generated content, and requiring platforms to remove such content upon receipt of a complaint from the person whose identity has been misappropriated, within a prescribed timeframe not exceeding forty-eight hours.
The fourth area of reform addresses the constitutional balance between personality rights protection and the freedom of expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India, 1950. It is submitted that the proposed Personality Rights (Protection and Enforcement) Act ought to incorporate a clear statutory exception for parody, satire, and commentary in the public interest, consistent with the approach adopted by the Delhi High Court in the Raj Shamani order and in prior decisions. Such an exception would ensure that the protection of personality rights does not operate as a vehicle for the suppression of legitimate political or social commentary, and would provide a principled legislative basis for the distinction between actionable commercial misappropriation and constitutionally protected expression that Indian courts have been developing through case law.
The fifth area of reform pertains to the accessible enforcement of personality rights for persons who are not public figures but whose digital identities are nonetheless vulnerable to misappropriation through artificial intelligence-generated content. It is submitted that the proposed statutory framework ought to extend its protections to all natural persons, not merely public figures, and that a designated online portal for the registration of complaints of deepfake and identity misappropriation ought to be established by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, enabling the rapid escalation of complaints to the competent authority for expeditious enforcement action. The legal aid framework under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 ought similarly to be extended to cover persons who are unable to afford legal representation in personality rights proceedings.
Conclusion
The interim order of Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora in the suit filed by Raj Shamani before the Delhi High Court represents a significant and timely development in the emerging Indian jurisprudence of personality rights in the digital age, affirming the right of public figures to effective judicial protection against artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes, fake chatbots, and the unauthorised commercial exploitation of their identities, while maintaining a principled commitment to the constitutional protection of parody and satire under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India, 1950. The order is consistent with a growing body of Delhi High Court authority on personality rights that has progressively elaborated the constitutional and statutory foundations of identity protection in India, drawing upon the right to privacy under Article 21 and the statutory remedies available under the Trade Marks Act, 1999, the Copyright Act, 1957, and the Information Technology Act, 2000. It is submitted, however, that the full realisation of the constitutional promise of identity protection in the digital age requires the legislative and regulatory reforms recommended in this article, reforms that would provide a clear, accessible, and comprehensive statutory framework for the protection of personality rights for all persons in India against the rapidly evolving threats posed by artificial intelligence-generated content.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q1. What are personality rights, and what is their constitutional basis in India?
Personality rights refer to a natural person’s rights in relation to their name, likeness, image, voice, signature, and distinctive persona, encompassing both the dignitary interest in controlling how one’s identity is used and the commercial interest in the economic value derived from one’s identity. In India, the constitutional basis for personality rights is grounded primarily in Article 21 of the Constitution of India, 1950, which guarantees the right to life and personal liberty including, as the Supreme Court held in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1, the right to privacy and dignity. The commercial dimension of personality rights is further protected through statutory provisions under the Trade Marks Act, 1999, the Copyright Act, 1957, and the law of passing off, which together provide remedies for the unauthorised commercial exploitation of a person’s identity. The Delhi High Court has progressively developed these constitutional and statutory foundations in a series of personality rights decisions involving public figures.
Q2. What legal remedy is available to a public figure whose identity has been misappropriated through artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes?
A public figure whose identity has been misappropriated through artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes or other synthetic media may seek injunctive relief from the Delhi High Court or the appropriate High Court by filing a suit for the protection of personality rights, passing off, and infringement of rights under the Trade Marks Act, 1999 and the Copyright Act, 1957. The Court may, in appropriate cases, grant ex parte injunctive relief on an urgent basis directing the immediate takedown of infringing content from digital platforms, as demonstrated in the Raj Shamani matter. John Doe relief may also be obtained against unknown infringers, enabling dynamic enforcement as new instances of infringement are identified. Additionally, a complaint may be filed with the relevant platform under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, requiring the platform to take down the infringing content within a prescribed timeframe, and a police complaint may be lodged under Section 66E of the Information Technology Act, 2000 where the infringing content involves the publication of images of private areas of the aggrieved person without consent.
Q3. What criminal liability exists in India for the creation or distribution of deepfakes?
India does not currently have a specific criminal provision addressing the creation or distribution of artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes that misappropriate a person’s identity. The existing statutory framework provides limited criminal remedies: Section 66E of the Information Technology Act, 2000 penalises the publication of images of private areas of persons without consent with imprisonment up to three years and fine; Section 67 of the IT Act penalises the publication of obscene material in electronic form; and the general provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 governing defamation, impersonation, and fraud may be applicable in appropriate cases. The absence of a specific criminal provision against deepfakes represents a significant gap in the legal framework that Parliament has not yet addressed. It is submitted that specific criminal liability for the creation and distribution of artificial intelligence-generated content that misappropriates a person’s identity without consent ought to be introduced by an amendment to the Information Technology Act, 2000.
Q4. What positive obligation do digital platforms bear in India to protect the personality rights of public figures?
Digital platforms that operate in India are subject to obligations under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, made under Section 87 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, to acknowledge and act upon complaints of identity misappropriation and impersonation within prescribed timeframes, and to deploy proactive measures to identify and remove content that violates applicable law. Rule 3(1)(b) of the 2021 Rules requires intermediaries to ensure that their platforms are not used for the publication of content that impersonates another person or violates their privacy. The Delhi High Court’s orders in personality rights cases, including the Raj Shamani matter, have further established that platforms are expected to cooperate promptly with court-ordered takedowns of deepfakes, fake chatbots, and other artificial intelligence-generated content that violates personality rights, and that their failure to do so may result in their being added as parties to the proceedings and being held liable for the continued presence of infringing content on their platforms.
Q5. Are parody and satire of public figures protected against personality rights claims in India?
Parody and satire of public figures are generally protected as forms of free expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India, 1950, and the Delhi High Court has, in its personality rights jurisprudence, including the Raj Shamani order, declined to enjoin parody and satirical content at the stage of interim relief, recognising that such content falls within the constitutional protection of freedom of speech and expression. However, this protection is not absolute: parody or satire that constitutes defamation, that is obscene or that crosses into actionable harm of a nature distinct from mere commentary or critique of the public figure may attract separate legal proceedings under the applicable law. The Delhi High Court’s approach reflects the constitutional principle that personality rights protection must be balanced against the right to free expression, and that courts must be cautious about enjoining content that a reasonable person would recognise as parody or satire rather than as a genuine misrepresentation of the public figure’s identity or views. Public figures must accordingly pursue separate causes of action in respect of content that crosses the line from protected expression into actionable harm.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
– Constitution of India, 1950, Articles 19(1)(a), 19(2), and 21.
– Trade Marks Act, 1999 (Act No. 47 of 1999), Sections 14, 27, and 29.
– Copyright Act, 1957 (Act No. 14 of 1958), Sections 38 and 38A.
– Information Technology Act, 2000 (Act No. 21 of 2000), Sections 66E and 67.
– Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, Rule 3(1)(b).
– Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1 (Supreme Court of India).
– Titan Industries Ltd. v. Ramkumar Jewellers, (2012) 50 PTC 341 (Delhi High Court).
– Raj Shamani v. John Doe and Others, Interim Order of Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora, Delhi High Court, November 2025 (unreported).
– Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (Act No. 45 of 2023).
– Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 (Act No. 39 of 1987), Section 12.
Secondary Sources
– Pravin Anand and Achuthan Sreekumar, ‘Personality Rights in India: Judicial Development and Legislative Gaps’ (2023) 58(2) Journal of the Indian Law Institute 156.
– Gautam Bhatia, The Transformative Constitution: A Radical Biography in Nine Acts, HarperCollins, Noida, 2019.
– Shamnad Basheer, ‘Personality Rights, Privacy and the Public Interest’ (2022) 54(4) Economic and Political Weekly 29.
– Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, Report of the Expert Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Digital Governance, MeitY, New Delhi, 2024.
– Internet Freedom Foundation, Deepfakes in India: Legal Challenges and Policy Recommendations, IFF, New Delhi, 2023.
– N.S. Gopalakrishnan and T.G. Agitha, Principles of Intellectual Property, 3rd edn., Eastern Book Company, Lucknow, 2020.
– Arpan Banerjee, ‘Personality Rights in Indian Law: The Doctrinal Landscape’ (2021) 32(1) National Law School of India Review 78.
– LiveLaw, Delhi HC Grants Interim Relief to Podcaster Raj Shamani Against AI Deepfakes and Fake Chatbots, LiveLaw Media, November 2025.
