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Consent and likeness

Also called voice cloning consent, personality rights

Consent and likeness is about who may use your face, voice or name to make AI copies of you, and the rights that let you say no.

Safety and societyEveryday

In plain words

Your likeness is what makes you recognisable: your face, your voice, your name, even a catchphrase. AI can now copy these from a few photos or a short voice clip and produce new videos or songs that seem to come from you.

Sometimes that is welcome. An actor may license their voice for dubbing into ten languages and get paid. The question is whether the person agreed. A singer's voice cloned for a song they never sang, a star's face in a fake advert, or anyone's face placed into an intimate image all happen without consent.

Laws are catching up. In India, courts protect personality rights and have ordered AI fakes of film stars and singers taken down. Other countries are passing laws on voice cloning and intimate deepfakes. The idea behind all of them is simple: your likeness should not be used without your permission.

Everyday example

A photo on the shop's hoarding

Your local sweet shop puts your smiling photo on its Diwali hoarding without asking. Most people would feel that is wrong, even if the photo was taken in public. They borrowed your face to sell something. AI makes the same thing possible with your voice and moving image, from a few seconds of recording, at the click of a button.

Where the example breaks: A hoarding is one fixed picture you can walk up to. An AI copy can say or do anything, can be made by anyone anywhere, and can spread to millions before you even know it exists.

Go deeper

How it actually works

Likeness rights are an older legal idea, often called the right of publicity or personality rights, now stretched to cover AI copies.

  1. How copying works

    Deepfake and voice-cloning models learn the patterns of a face or voice from examples, then generate new material. In 2023 Microsoft researchers showed a model that could imitate a new voice from a 3-second recording, using text-to-speech techniques.

  2. India: courts lead

    India has no single statute on personality rights; courts build them from existing law. The Delhi High Court restrained misuse of Anil Kapoor's name, voice and image, including AI-manipulated pictures (September 2023). The Bombay High Court protected Arijit Singh against AI voice cloning (July 2024), saying a voice is "a key component" of personal identity.

  3. India: more stars, faster takedowns

    In September 2025 the Delhi High Court barred AI-generated and deepfake content using Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's likeness. Separately, IT Rules amended from 20 February 2026 require labels on AI-generated content and takedowns within three hours of a government or court order.

  4. United States

    Tennessee's ELVIS Act (March 2024) protects artists' voices from AI imitation without consent. The federal TAKE IT DOWN Act (May 2025) makes publishing non-consensual intimate images, including AI fakes, a crime and requires platforms to remove them within 48 hours of a valid request. A broader federal NO FAKES Act was reintroduced in May 2026 and is not law as of November 2026.

  5. Europe

    The EU AI Act requires deepfakes to be labelled from August 2026, and a ban on AI that makes intimate images of real people without consent applies from 2 December 2026. In October 2026 Denmark put forward a bill to give people rights over realistic copies of their face and voice.

Key Indian cases
Anil Kapoor (Delhi HC, 20 September 2023), Arijit Singh v. Codible Ventures (Bombay HC, 26 July 2024), Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (Delhi HC, September 2025)
What is protected
Name, image, voice, signature and distinctive traits such as a catchphrase, mainly against commercial misuse and harmful fakes
Usual exceptions
News, satire, parody and criticism are generally allowed, though the lines differ by country
Not legal advice
We are not lawyers. Check current law where you live

Questions people ask

Is it illegal to clone someone's voice with AI?

It depends on where and why. Cloning without consent for commercial use can breach personality rights in India, as the Bombay High Court found for Arijit Singh in 2024, and laws such as Tennessee's ELVIS Act in the US. Parody and news may be treated differently.

What are personality rights in India?

The right to control commercial use of your name, image, voice and other identifying traits. They are not written in one statute but recognised by courts, mostly in cases brought by actors and singers against unauthorised merchandise, ads and AI fakes.

What can I do if someone makes a deepfake of me?

Report it to the platform where it appears and ask for removal. In India you can also report it on the national cybercrime portal (cybercrime.gov.in) or call 1930, and seek a court order. Keep links and screenshots as evidence.

Do ordinary people have likeness rights, or only celebrities?

Most Indian court cases so far involve celebrities, because their likeness has commercial value. But privacy, defamation and IT laws protect everyone, and laws on intimate deepfakes apply to anyone. Denmark's proposed law explicitly covers ordinary people.

Can AI companies train on my photos and voice?

That is a separate but linked question about training data, covered by privacy and copyright law. Likeness rights mainly concern outputs that imitate you, not whether your data was in the training set.

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Further reading

Prepared by Mundhra Labs. Reviewed by Aditya Mundhra. Checked November 2026.