“We are excited about what responsible AI can do for music,” Koda’s chief Gorm Arildsen said. “But innovation can’t be built on stolen goods.” (source: techxplore)<\/p>\n Recently, the Bombay High Court has granted landmark interim protection to legendary playback singer Asha Bhosle<\/a> against AI voice cloning<\/a>. Justice Arif S. Doctor remarked that “making AI tools available to enable the conversion of any voice into that of a celebrity without his\/her permission would constitute a violation of the celebrity’s personality rights<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n As tech companies train generative AI models on publicly available celebrity content, the core question is whether the\u2018fair dealing<\/a>\u2019 exception under copyright law can shield AI developers from liability when they scrape voices, images, and distinctive mannerisms of famous personalities without consent?<\/p>\n \u201cCourts in India treat personality rights<\/a> as distinct from copyright, and even publicly available voice recordings cannot be freely used for AI training without consent,\u201d answered Zameer Nathani, global general counsel at DNEG. \u201cIn the US, White vs Samsung Electronics (9th Circuit Court) held that imitating a celebrity\u2019s likeness violates publicity rights, while Midler vs Ford Motor Co. (9th Circuit Court) the court held that imitation of a singer\u2019s voice is actionable,\u201d cited Nathani.<\/p>\n Delhi High Court, in recent times, has passed several injunctions protecting Kumar Sanu, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan<\/a>, Abhishek Bachchan, and journalist Sudhir Chaudhary against AI-generated deepfakes underscoring underscoring a growing judicial recognition that voice, image, likeness, and mannerisms constitute protected personality attributes regardless of public availability or fair dealing<\/a> claims.<\/p>\n \u201cRecent court orders passed in India protecting personality rights are mostly ad interim orders,\u201d noted Ashutoh Kumar, senior partner at Singh and Singh. \u201cIt is yet to be seen how a fair dealing defence would be applied in relation to these rights. However, judicial trends indicate a strong inclination towards protecting individual identity and preventing unauthorised commercial exploitation of one\u2019s personality right.\u201d<\/p>\n Compounding the uncertainty is India’s yet-to-be-enforced Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. Section 3(c)(ii) exempts from the Act’s protections “personal data made publicly available by the data principal”<\/p>\n \u201cThe exemption applies only to personal data, not to broader personality attributes,\u201d voiced Kumar. \u201cUnauthorised commercial use of such personality traits may constitute misappropriation or passing off, regardless of whether the underlying data was publicly accessible or not.\u201d<\/p>\n The Supreme Court’s 2017 decision in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India established privacy as a fundamental right, creating a constitutional floor for personality protection that statutory exemptions cannot circumvent.<\/p>\nIPIC<\/span>On November 3, 2025, Danish copyright collecting society Koda has filed a lawsuit agai<\/a>nst US based, AI music generator Suno alleging that the company trained its generative AI models on copyrighted works by Danish musicians without authorisation. This is part of a growing pattern: from industry leader OpenAI to music specialist Udio, AI co. have been accused by major record companies of using their work to train AI models to produce music.<\/p>\n
Personal data made publicly available<\/h2>\n
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