The Bombay High Court has granted interim relief to singer Arijit Singh in his copyright suit against artificial intelligence (AI) platforms and others for violating his personality rights.
Justice RI Chagla noted that Singh’s name, voice, image, likeness, persona and other traits are protectable under his personality rights and right to publicity. The Court stated that using a celebrity's voice without permission violates their personality rights.
“This form of technological exploitation not only infringes upon the individual’s right to control and protect their own likeness and voice but also undermines their ability to prevent commercial and deceptive uses of their identity," Bar and Bench quoted the court ruling.
The Bombay High Court highlighted performers' vulnerability to AI content targeting, threatening their livelihood. The defendants attract visitors to their sites and AI platforms by exploiting the plaintiff's fame, risking the plaintiff's personality rights, the ruling said.
AI encourages users to create fake recordings and videos misusing the plaintiff's identity. Allowing this use without consent risks severe economic harm to the plaintiff's career and opens opportunities for misuse by malicious individuals, it added.
Arijit Singh sought court protection for his name, voice, signature, photograph, image, caricature, likeness and other personality traits. This action followed his discovery that AI platforms mimicked his personality through sophisticated algorithms. One platform even used text-to-speech software to convert text into his voice.
The Bollywood singer's traits were unauthorisedly used beyond AI platforms. A pub in Bangalore promoted an event using his name and image without permission. Another party used his photographs on merchandise sold online, and one more registered domain names using his name.
Singh has exclusive control over his personality traits, and the defendants should be stopped from using these traits commercially without permission to protect his reputation, the singer’s lawyer argued.
The lawyer also claimed that unauthorised changes or sharing of Singh's performances, which could harm his reputation, would violate his moral rights under Section 38-B of the Copyright Act, 1957.
