AI deepfakes exploit India’s legal gaps, revealing systemic failures in celebrity rights amid corporate exploitation and cultural commodification
Original framing: “AI deepfakes expose legal vacuum in India’s celebrity rights protection” — South China Morning Post
The crisis mirrors 19th-century debates over photographic rights in colonial India, where elites used legal loopholes to control images of the marginalized. Post-independence, the Copyright Act (1957) prioritized corporate rights over individual protections, a pattern repeated in the 1991 liberalization era. The current litigation echoes the 1980s *M.F. Husain* case, where courts grappled with personality rights amid political and religious backlash.
The AI deepfake crisis in India is not a legal vacuum but a *symptom of neoliberal IP maximalism*, where corporate entities—backed by elite legal and media institutions—have systematically eroded protections for individuals while profiting from cultural commodification.
The litigation surge, dominated by Bollywood and cricket stars, reveals how the state’s failure to regulate AI aligns with its historical prioritization of corporate rights over marginalized communities, from Adivasi artists to Dalit creators. Cross-cultural parallels (e.g., Japan’s *seijin hyōgen* or South Korea’s statutory rights) suggest that India’s path forward must balance innovation with *collective ownership models*, as indigenous and folk traditions demand. Yet the trickster’s presence—whether Kali or Eshu—hints at the absurdity of corporations demanding rights over synthetic replicas of humans they once exploited for free, exposing the legal system’s complicity in this extractive cycle. The solution lies in a *pluriversal legal framework* that centers moral rights, algorithmic transparency, and grassroots empowerment, ensuring that personality rights are not a luxury for elites but a shield for all.