The Bombay High Court granted interim relief to Arijit Singh in a lawsuit aimed at protecting his personality rights. The Court ruled that converting any voice to mimic a celebrity’s without their permission is a violation of their personality rights.
Mumbai: The Bombay High Court recently provided interim relief to singer Arijit Singh in a copyright lawsuit he filed against various Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms and other entities for infringing on his personality rights.
Justice RI Chagla noted that Singh’s distinctive attributes such as his name, voice, image, likeness, persona, and other personal traits legally protectable aspects of his personality rights and right to publicity.
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The Court emphasized that converting any voice to mimic that of a celebrity without their permission constitutes a violation of the celebrity’s personality rights.
The Court stated,
“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,”
It further stressed the vulnerability of performers to AI-generated content, which could endanger their livelihood.
The Court added,
“The defendants are attracting visitors and increasing traffic to their websites and AI platforms by exploiting the plaintiff’s popularity and reputation, thus subjecting the plaintiff’s personality rights to potential abuse. They are encouraging internet users to create counterfeit sound recordings and videos that misuse the plaintiff’s character and identity. Moreover, allowing the defendants to continue using the plaintiff’s name, voice, likeness, etc., in AI content without consent not only poses significant economic harm to the plaintiff’s career but also opens the door for misuse by unscrupulous individuals for nefarious purposes,”
Singh sought legal protection for his name, voice, signature, photograph, image, caricature, likeness, and various other aspects of his personality after discovering that AI platforms using advanced algorithms to create content mimicking his traits. One such platform employed text-to-speech software to convert text into Singh’s voice.
The misuse of Singh’s attributes wasn’t limited to AI platforms. In one instance, a pub in Bangalore used Singh’s name and image to promote an event without his authorization. Another defendant used Singh’s photographs on merchandise sold online, while yet another registered domain names like arijitsingh.com.
Singh’s legal team argued that the singer should have exclusive control over the commercial use of his personality traits to prevent damage to his reputation. They also contended that unauthorized alterations or dissemination of Singh’s performances, harming his reputation, would infringe his moral rights under Section 38-B of the Copyright Act, 1957.
The Court, after hearing the arguments, found a strong case for granting interim relief to Singh. The Court noted that freedom of speech and expression does not extend to exploiting a celebrity’s persona for commercial gain, stating,
“Even though such freedom allows for critique and commentary, it does not grant the license to exploit a celebrity’s persona for commercial gain. In these circumstances, this Court is inclined to protect the Plaintiff against any wrongful exploitation of his personality rights and right to publicity.”
Consequently, the Court restrained the defendants from using Singh’s name, voice, vocal style, manner of singing, photograph, image or likeness, signature, persona, and any other personality attributes without his consent. The Court also ordered the suspension of URLs containing Singh’s name.
The Court stated that it would consider Singh’s application to take over the domain names, subject to payment of requisite charges, after notifying the defendants.
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Regarding videos demonstrating how to mimic celebrities, including Singh, using AI software, the Court did not find it appropriate to order their removal. Instead, it directed the defendants to delete all references to Singh’s name, image, voice, and personality traits from the videos.
The interim relief granted by the Court will remain in effect until September 3, the day after the next hearing.
Singh represented by Advocates Hiren Kamod, Prem Khullar, Neha Iyer, Vaibhav Keni, and Priyanka Joshi, instructed by Legasis Partners.
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