Personality Rights in the Digital Age: Analysing the Delhi High Court’s Protection of Raj Shamani’s Identity Against AI Deepfakes, Fake Chatbots, and Unauthorised Commercial Exploitation
By Guru Legal
Keywords
personality rights; right of publicity; AI deepfakes; digital identity; Delhi High Court; Raj Shamani; John Doe injunction; parody; satire; passing off; copyright; trademark; AI-generated content; right to identity; India
Abstract
The proliferation of artificial intelligence tools capable of generating realistic deepfake videos, voice clones, and AI-powered chatbots impersonating real individuals has created urgent legal challenges for the protection of personality rights the rights of individuals to control the commercial exploitation of their name, likeness, voice, and persona. The Delhi High Court’s order in Raj Shamani v. John Doe & Ors., granting injunctions against AI deepfakes, fake chatbots, and unauthorised commercial use of the podcaster and entrepreneur’s name and likeness, while declining to restrain parody and satire, represents a significant advancement of the Indian jurisprudence on personality rights and digital identity. This article examines the legal basis for personality rights in India, the court’s approach to balancing personality rights protection against the right to freedom of expression, the specific legal challenges posed by AI deepfakes and impersonation chatbots, and the implications of the judgment for celebrity IP protection in the age of generative AI.
I. Introduction
India’s emerging jurisprudence on personality rights the cluster of intellectual property and common law rights that protect the commercial value of an individual’s identity has developed principally through a series of High Court decisions in which prominent individuals sought to restrain the unauthorised use of their names, images, and personas in advertising, merchandise, and digital content. The Delhi High Court’s decisions in Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India & Ors. (2023) and Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi & Ors. (2022) established that personality rights include the right to prevent the creation and distribution of deepfakes AI-generated audiovisual content that realistically depicts a real person doing or saying things they did not do or say and the right to control the commercial use of one’s digital persona. The Raj Shamani case extends these principles to the emerging category of AI-powered chatbots that impersonate real individuals.
II. The Legal Basis for Personality Rights in India
India does not have a dedicated personality rights or right of publicity statute. Personality rights protection has been constructed by courts from multiple overlapping legal bases: the constitutional right to privacy under Article 21, as affirmed in Puttaswamy (2017); the law of passing off, which prevents misrepresentation that the goods or services of one person are those of another; trademark law, protecting registered marks including celebrity names and distinctive marks; copyright law, protecting original creative expression; and the broad equitable jurisdiction of the court to prevent unjust enrichment and the appropriation of the commercial value of another’s identity without consent or compensation.
The common law right of publicity which in jurisdictions such as California provides a statutory basis for protecting the commercial value of a celebrity’s name, likeness, voice, signature, and persona has no direct Indian equivalent, though courts have recognised an analogous interest in preventing the commercial exploitation of celebrity identity without consent. The Supreme Court’s recognition of informational privacy as a component of the fundamental right to privacy in Puttaswamy provides a constitutional anchor for the right to control the digital use of one’s identity, including AI-generated representations.
III. AI Deepfakes and the Legal Challenge
AI deepfakes are generated using deep learning techniques specifically generative adversarial networks (GANs) or large-scale video diffusion models that can produce highly realistic video, audio, and image content depicting a real person in fabricated scenarios. A deepfake of a celebrity endorsing a product or service, saying something offensive or embarrassing, or engaging in intimate conduct creates multiple legal harms: damage to reputation, wrongful appropriation of commercial endorsement value, deception of consumers, and violation of the subject’s dignity and autonomy. The law of passing off particularly the element of misrepresentation is directly applicable where a deepfake falsely implies that the depicted celebrity has endorsed a product or consented to the creation of the content.
The Information Technology Act, 2000, as amended, does not contain a specific provision prohibiting the creation or distribution of non-consensual deepfakes. The IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 impose obligations on intermediaries to remove deepfake content upon notification, and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has issued specific guidelines requiring platforms to take down non-consensual deepfakes within 24 hours of receipt of a complaint. However, the legal standard for non-consensual deepfake liability, and the remedies available to victims, must currently be derived from general passing off, copyright, and privacy principles.
IV. The Court’s Balancing of Personality Rights and Free Expression
A critical aspect of the Delhi High Court’s order in Raj Shamani is its differentiation between commercial exploitation and satirical or parodic expression. The court granted injunctions against the creation and distribution of AI deepfakes depicting Raj Shamani endorsing products, AI chatbots impersonating him for commercial purposes, and the unauthorised use of his registered trademarks and copyrighted content. However, it declined at this stage to restrain content that constitutes parody or satire an important qualification that reflects the court’s recognition that satire and parody of public figures are protected forms of expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, even where they involve the use of a public figure’s name or likeness.
This distinction between commercial exploitation (which may be restrained) and satirical commentary (which may not) tracks the analysis adopted in US right of publicity jurisprudence, particularly the transformative use test, and provides a principled framework for balancing personality rights against free expression in the AI content context. The challenge, as generative AI makes the distinction between commercial exploitation and satire increasingly blurred, will be to develop clear legal standards that protect celebrity identity rights without chilling legitimate creative and critical expression.
V. Implications for Celebrity IP Protection in the AI Era
The Raj Shamani judgment has important implications for the protection of celebrity intellectual property in the era of generative AI. It confirms that Indian courts are willing to grant broad injunctive relief against AI-generated impersonation and commercial exploitation, including through John Doe orders directed at unidentified defendants an approach that is particularly appropriate given the anonymous and distributed nature of online content creation and distribution. It further signals that the absence of a dedicated right of publicity statute is not a bar to effective judicial protection of personality rights, given the broad equitable and constitutional jurisdiction of the High Courts.
VI. Conclusion
The Delhi High Court’s order in the Raj Shamani case advances India’s personality rights jurisprudence to address the specific and novel challenges of AI deepfakes and impersonation chatbots. The court’s balanced approach protecting commercial identity rights while preserving space for satire and parody provides a sound framework for future cases in this rapidly evolving area. The longer-term challenge is to develop, through legislation or judicial elaboration, clearer and more specific standards for AI-generated content involving real persons, addressing issues of consent, attribution, labelling of synthetic content, and platform liability that will become increasingly pressing as generative AI capabilities continue to advance.
Bibliography
Raj Shamani v. John Doe & Ors. (Delhi High Court, 2025).
Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India & Ors. (Delhi High Court, 2023).
Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi & Ors. (Delhi High Court, 2022).
Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India (2017) 10 SCC 1.
Information Technology Act, 2000 (India).
Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (India).
MeitY Guidelines on Deepfake Content (2023-2024).
Constitution of India, Articles 19(1)(a) and 21.
