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Key developments: Recent rulings by the Delhi and Bombay High Courts have expressly listed a celebrity’s voice, vocal style, and persona among the protected attributes of personality rights. In 2024‑25 the Bombay High Court stopped AI platforms from cloning the voices of singers Arijit Singh and Asha Bhosle, declaring that offering tools that reproduce a celebrity’s voice without consent breaches those rights. The Delhi High Court has similarly linked AI‑generated deepfakes to privacy, dignity, and tort claims such as dilution and tarnishment.
Why it matters: These decisions expand the traditional scope of Indian personality‑rights law—formerly limited to name, image, and likeness—to cover synthetic reproductions of voice and other AI‑generated traits. By issuing interim ex‑parte injunctions, the courts are preventing ongoing dissemination of harmful deepfakes, signalling that courts will intervene proactively against AI‑driven identity misuse. This creates new legal risk for AI developers, platform operators, and advertisers who rely on voice‑cloning technology for commercial purposes.
What to watch next: The lack of a unified statutory framework remains a major gap, with courts relying on piecemeal precedents. Observers expect legislative proposals to define personality‑rights in the AI era, potentially setting clear thresholds for celebrity versus non‑celebrity protection and addressing post‑mortem rights. Future litigation will likely test the limits of these injunctions, especially regarding parody, satire, and fair‑use defenses, shaping how India balances innovation in generative AI with the right to control one’s identity. [[1, 2]]