The Legal Status Of Virtual Influencers In India: Between Advertising, Speech And Consumer Protection

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Author(s): Umima Mohd Ajaz Tadvi

Paper Details: Volume 4, Issue 5

Citation: IJLSSS 4(5) 32

Page No: 392 – 408

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ABSTRACT

Virtual influencers are computer-generated persons designed to behave like humans and create content on social media. Content creators have moved from novelty to an established marketing device in India, with figures such as Kyra, Naina Avtr and Myntra’s Maya securing brand deals across fashion, electronics and consumer goods. India has no statue for this category. Instead, it stretches existing frameworks to cover this problem, i.e., consumer protection law, which defines the term “endorsement” in terms of a human endorser’s opinion and experience; the free speech doctrine of the constitution on commercial speech, developed for human and corporate advertisers under Article 19 (1) (a); and the recently amended Information Technology Rules, which regulate “synthetic generated information” without any reference to advertising. This research paper examines these and argues that the absence of legislation on legal personhood for a virtual influencer shifts liability onto the entities that created it and operate it. It also compares the Indian position with the United States’ Federal Trade Commission Endorsement Guides and the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act. It concludes by saying that India regulates virtual influences by analogy rather than by design and proposes certain amendments to close the gap between them.

INTRODUCTION

A virtual influencer is a computer-generated figure, but with three-dimensional modelling, computer-generated images or artificial intelligence, that maintains a social presence. It also has followers and also enters into brand partnerships, like in the form of human content creators. Such a character is Kyra, created by FUTR studios and launched on Instagram in January 2022, has been advertised with Amazon Prime Video, Boat and John Jacobs, and has crossed a quarter of a million followers. Naina Avtr, created by Avtr Meta Labs in the year 2022, has advertised for Puma, Pepsi and Nykaa and has passed the 350 thousand follower mark. Myntra’s Maya was launched in the year 2023 and has a following of 150 thousand. These influencers are not just experiments at the margins of the influencers’ economy; they are commercial actors with real advertising budgets behind them.

The problem is that Indian law is not written for non-human advertisement in mind. Three different regulatory frameworks have legal effect on them, but none is drafted for them. The Consumer Protection Act, 2019, and the guidelines issued under it govern misleading advertisements and endorsements but define an endorsement in terms of human beings’ opinions, findings or experiences.

Article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution of India protects commercial speech, but it doesn’t cover artificial persons; it is limited to citizens and juristic persons which are capable of holding rights, which simply doesn’t include fictional avatars.

The Informational Technology Rules, amended in February of 2026, are to address deepfakes and synthetic media and regulate the platforms that carry such content but were built around misinformation and impersonation risks, not brand endorsement.

This paper argues that the most important starting point for understanding virtual influencers is that they are not legally recognised as “persons”. Every question about the liability of virtual influencers is on its conduct, close analysis and liability of human or corporate actors operating it. Then in Part II the research paper will set out what a virtual influencer is and survey the leading Indian examples. Then, in part III, the personhood questions will be addressed directly. Parts IV, V, and VI will examine the consumer protection framework, the constitutional framework, the constitutional free speech dimensions, and the newly enacted Information and Technology Act amendment relating to synthesis media rules. Part VII considers the problem of personality rights, where a virtual person borrows a real individual’s likeness. Part VIII compares India’s position with the U.S. and the European Union, and finally, Parts IX and X will be dealing with resulting gaps and proposing reforms.

Kyra                             

 Naina

Myntra’s Maya

Photographs are screenshots from Instagram

DEFINING THE VIRTUAL INFLUENCER: TECHNOLOGY AND INDIAN CASE STUDIES

The First Advertising Standard Council of India’s Guidelines for Influencer Advertising in Digital Media was issued in 2021, which was among the earliest regulatory instruments that used the term ‘virtual influencers’ as defined in the category, describing them as persons who are fictional, computer-generated characters designed with human-like features and personalities who function on social media in the same way a human influencer would. The definition has two elements worth separating. First is technological : the persona is generated through computer graphics or artificial intelligence rather than being photographed. The second is functional: regardless of how it is made, the persona is deployed to do some commercial work as an influencer does, building a following, projecting a lifestyle, and using that trust to promote a product. India’s virtual influencers roster illustrates the range within a specific category. Kyra is presented as a 22-year-old model based in Mumbai, and Naina Avtr is a 22-year-old from Jhansi who moved to a city to build a career in front of the camera. Sarvya, also from FUTR Studio, is positioned as Kyra’s talented manager and MBA graduate. Myntra’s Maya is explicitly brand-owned rather than independently marketed. Each of these stories is fictional in its entirety; no living person’s face, voice or biography was used to build them, and no one’s consent was required to create them.

A separate category should be kept distinct. When Deepika Padukone lent her voice to Meta AI in 2024, she became the first Indian celebrity to do so, and the resulting product was not a virtual influencer in the same sense used here; it was a licensed use of a person’s voice attached to conversational assistance, which was governed by contract, and where that contract is exceeded, by personality rights. The same difference would be applied to any future “digital twin” concept a brand might build around a consenting celebrity’s likeness. In that scenario litigation it can generate when consent is absent and is taken up separately in Part 7. The remaining paper deals with, unless stated otherwise, concerns wholly fictional personas of the Kyra and Naina Avtr type, where no natural person’s identity is at stake.

THE THRESHOLD PROBLEM: PERSONHOOD AND THE LOCUS OF LIABILITY

Before asking any question related to advertising law or free speech about a virtual influencer, a prior question has to be settled, that is, can the persona itself hold rights or bear duties under Indian law? Indian courts have, in fact, shown considerable willingness to extend juristic personality beyond natural persons. In Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee, Amritsar v. Som Nath Das[1] The Supreme Court confirmed that legal personhood is a matter of legal attribution rather than biological fact, a principle it had already applied to Hindu deities in Ram Jankijee Deity v State of Bihar[2], which recognised an idol as capable of holding property through its shebait. The Uttarakhand High Court went further still in Mohd Salim v. State of Uttrakhand[3], declaring the Ganga and Yamuna rivers to be living legal entities, though the Supreme Court later stayed that finding on grounds of practical enforceability.

Not any jurisprudence includes an algorithm, a piece of software, or a computer-generated persona. Indian law currently treats an artificial intelligence system, but however its outputs may appear as a property which is something owned, operated and directed by a natural or juristic person, not something that can itself own property, enter a contract, or be sued. A virtual influencer cannot, therefore, be the bearer of any legal obligation created by the Consumer Protection Act, the Constitution, or the Information Technology Rules. Every one of these obligations must attach to the entity that designs, animates and commercially deploys the persona, irrespective of whether it’s a specialised studio such as FUTR Studios or Avtr Meta Labs, or the brand that commissions and pays for the endorsement.

This has a practical problem that recurs throughout the rest of this paper: that regulators cannot punish Kyra; they can only punish the company behind Kyra. Every tool of regulation is built around the idea of an individual endorser; from fine to a ban on future endorsements, it has to be redirected towards a corporate defendant instead. Whether the existing statutory provision ‘Mohd’Mohdlanguage actually accomplishes that redirection, or merely assumes it, is the question that will be answered in the next three parts.

VIRTUAL INFLUENCERS AS COMMERCIAL ACTORS: THE CONSUMER PROTECTION FRAMEWORK

Sec 2 (18) of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, defines an endorsement as a representation that causes a consumer to believe it reflects the opinion, findings or experiences of the person making it. This definition was written for human beings who  genuinely do or don’t have an opinion on that product. A virtual influencer being a set of generated images and text produced by a studio’s creative and technical team cannot form an opinion or an experience in the sense of the provisions contemplated. Literally opposed by Kyra praising a pair of headphones does not reflect any opinion at all; it reflects a decision taken by copywriters and brand managers about what opinion to stimulate, and this is not just a mere academic point. In the consumer protection act the entire apparatus of Indroses’ liability includes the duty of diligence and the power to bar and introduce from future work, and that is to build the promise that there is an introsing person whose credibility is being implicitly attached to the product.

The advertising standard councils of India close this cap functionally; it is not statutory by requiring the virtual content influencers to carry a disclosure telling consumers they are not interacting with real human beings. In addition to the standard advertisement disclosure required of every influential force in 2026, this was tightened into what has been described as a dual disclosure requirement: Every promotional post that is posted by a virtual persona must carry both an artificial intelligence or virtual personality and the ordinary paid partnership label, with the responsibility of compliance placed squarely on the brand that engages the person rather than the persona itself. The council also treats the studio or brand behind our influencers as the advisor advertiser for every purpose of this code.

The more difficult question lies with the central Consumer Protection Authority established under Section 10 of the Act and empowered under Section 18 to issue guidelines again miscellating advertisements. Its guidelines for prevention of misleading advertisement and endorsement notification in June 2022 impose a due diligence obligation on anyone who introduces a product requiring adequate information about the experience with the goods. The Supreme Court applied this obligation forcefully in the Indian Medical Association versus the Union of India[4], arising out of Patanjali Ayurved advertising practices, holding that public figures and influences must exercise due diligence awards will influencer cannot exercise due diligence in a meaningful sense; it can only be a programme to display the outside diligence someone has performed that someone else, under any coherent reading of the guidelines, has to be the studio or the brand controlling the person, but the guidelines themselves do not say so in terms.

The remedies available under Section 21 of the act sharpen the same difficulty; the authority may impose a penalty of 10 lakh rupees for a first violation and up to 5 lakh rupees for a repeated one and may prohibit and endorse ending any product for up to 1 year, extendable up to 3 years, for repeated offenders. A prohibition on endorser has an obvious target when the endorser is a human celebrity, whereas it has no target at all when the endorser is a frictional character with no independent existence in practice. Any such order would have to run against the company operating the Persona, converting what the status frames as a personal disqualification into a corporate one. That conversation will be the correct legal outcome, but it is achieved through interpretation rather than the true language the act actually contains.

To further instruments fill in the clamping picture without resolving the underlining definition gap, the Department of Consumer Affairs issued “Endorsement Knows-Hows” in January 2023, setting out a disclosure format specifically for celebrities, influencers and virtual influencers, and followed this with sector-specific guidance for health and financial influencers in 2023 and again in 2025 and 2026. Both instruments proceed on the assumption that never itself defences the length that awards as an undressment required disclosure that assumption is defensible as policy as a matter of statutory construction. It remains an assumption.

FREE SPEECH AND THE LIMITS OF ARTICLE 19(1)(A)

Commercial speech has unpredictable changes. Under Article 191(a) in Hamdard Dawakhana versus the Union of India[5] is Supreme Court held that an advertisement being an act of trade rather than an expression of ideas falls outside the protection of freedom of speech and expression altogether. That position did not survive contact with Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Pvt Ltd v Union of India[6], which found the earlier ruling too broadly stated, and it was decisively narrowed in Tata Press Ltd v Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd[7], where the Court held that commercial speech is protected under Article 19(1)(a) and is not disqualified from that protection merely because it is issued by businessmen. Tata Press did carry forward one qualification from Hamdard Dawakhana: speech that is deceptive, unfair, misleading or untruthful remains outside the protection the Article otherwise confers and is instead a legitimate object of restriction under Article 19(2).

Applying this doctrine to a virtual influencer requires the same move made throughout this paper. Article 19(1)(a) is a right held by citizens, and the wider guarantee of Article 19 extends, at most, to juristic persons capable of holding rights; a computer-generated persona holds no rights of its own and cannot be the rights-holder in any free speech claim. The constitutional question is therefore never whether Kyra or Naina Avtr has a right to speak. It is whether the studio or brand that authored, animated and published the content enjoys Article 19(1)(a) protection for having done so, and whether that content falls within or outside the Tata Press qualification for deceptive commercial speech.

This reinterpreting has played a direct playoff for the disclosure debate examined in part 4 that, if a brand publisher’s commercial content is true, a persona designated to be indistinguishable from a real human being without disclosing its synthetic nature, the omission arguably renders the speech deceptive within the meaning. Tata Press gives that ‘Tataterm independent of weather, and the specific factual claim above the product is false. On reading this, the constitutional protection available to a virtual influencer brand operator is conditional and, on disclosure, not nearly on the truth of the underlying product plans, and accurate but disclosed synthetic endorsement can still fall outside Article 19(1)(a)’s shelter because the deception lies in the concealment of the speaker’s nature, not in anything said about the product.

Further restriction on the ground deserves note given to the demographic these personas target. The 2022 guidelines carve out high-level protection for advertisements addressed to children, recognising their particular vulnerability to persuasive marketing. Naina Avtr Kyra are both deliberately positioned as beautiful aspirational 20-somethings, a decision choice with obvious appeal to the young audience, even where the advertised product is not itself a child-directed design with specific guidelines. The journal case that reasonable restrictions on the category of commercial speech, including disclosure mandates, are easily justified under Article 19, supposed to be for one deception or vulnerability, is shown.

SYNTHETIC MEDIA REGULATION AND ITS COLLISION WITH ADVERTISING LAW

The second independent regulatory track opened in February 2026, when the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology amended the Information Technology (Intermediate Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, to bring synthetically generated information within the intermediate due diligence framework. The amended Rule 2(1)(wa) defines this term broadly enough to capture any AI-generated, algorithmically generated or otherwise synthetic content, a definition wide enough to include every post a virtual influencer publishes. Under the amended Rule 3(3)(a)(ii), intermediaries must ensure that such content carries an appropriate, continuous disclosure, and platforms are barred from allowing that disclosure to be removed or suppressed once applied. Compliance is enforced through the safe harbour mechanism in Section 79 of the Information Technology Act: an intermediary that fails to meet these due diligence obligations risks losing the safe harbour that ordinarily shields it from liability for content posted by others.

The amended Rules were drafted with deepfakes, political disinformation and non-consensual intimate imagery chiefly in mind, which is why the most severe obligations, including a three-hour takedown window, are reserved for the most harmful categories of synthetic content. A commercial post from Kyra or Naina Avtr does not belong to that severe category, but it does fall within the general labelling requirement, since it is, definitionally, synthetically generated information.

This produces an overlap that the current framework does not manage well. A single Instagram post from virtual influences is now potentially subject to separate labelling regions at once. First is the Advertising Standard Council’s influencer-specific dual disclosure, addressing the brand and the person operating the operator, and second is the information technology rules’ synthetic content labelling, addressing the platform as an intermediary. These two different bodies used different definitions and imposed obligations on different actors in the supply chain, a label that satisfied. The council’s timing and content requirement is not automatically labelled to satisfy the continuous non-removable standard the information technology now imposes, and neither has the regulator issued guidance on the two.

The structural point from an administrative law perspective is that there is regulatory overlap without coordination between two separate exercises of delegated rule-making power, one under Section 18 of the Consumer Protection Act and the other under Section 87 of the Information Technology Act, conveying the same conduct without either instrumental acknowledgement of the other’s existence. Compliance officers advising a brand that runs a virtual influencer are, at present, left to satisfy both regimes independently, with no assurance that doing so avoids inconsistency between the two labels a single post may need to carry.

BORROWED FACES: PERSONALITY RIGHTS AND LICENSED DIGITAL TWINS

The analysis so far has concerned wholly fictional personas, where no real individual’s identity is implicated and personality rights accordingly have nothing to attach to. A different and increasingly urgent problem arises when a virtual persona is built, with or without consent, on the likeness, voice or mannerisms of an actual, identifiable person. Indian courts have developed a robust, judge-made law of personality and publicity rights to deal with exactly this scenario, largely through a sequence of Delhi High Court decisions decided since 2022.

In Amitabh Bachchan v Rajat Nagi[8], the Delhi High Court granted an ex parte injunction restraining the unauthorised commercial use of the actor’s name, voice, image and other personal attributes. In Anil Kapoor versus Simply Life India[9], the same court went further, extending the protection beyond physical likeness to mannerisms, gestures, and dialogue delivery and explicitly restraining the use of AI, visual intelligence, machine learning, deep takes, or face morphing tours to recreate the actor’s persona for commercial gain or otherwise. Jai Kishan Kaku Bhai Saraf, known as Jackie Shroff, versus The Pepsi store[10], the code restrain and the AI chat box print trained to make the actor’s voice and cat phrases. The Bombay High Court extended this extended logic to AI voice cloning in Arijit Singh versus Codible Ventures[11], and the Delhi High Court has since applied comparable reasoning in Karan Johar versus India Pride Advisory[12] and in Aishwarya Rai Bachchan versus Aishwarya World.com[13]. The letter directs the platform takedown within seventy-two hours. Underlying all these is the older principle from Titan Industries Limited versus Ramkumar Jewellers that the right to publicity survives the independence of any specific contract over the commercial use of their own identity.

This body of law, the consumer protection and free speech analysed in part IV and part V, addresses genuinely different wrongs. A wholly frictional persona, such as Kaira or Naina Avtr, infringes on no one’s personality rights; however deceptive or commercially effective it may be, it is because the taught requires an intensive natural person known as ‘plaintive’. There is no one to see, conversely, and the creation of Amitabh Bachchan’s voice and Anil Kapoor’s mannerism, ‘Aishwaryaeven where fully disclosed, as synthetic, can still be infringing personality rights because the wrong lines are commercial appropriation of real identity, not in any failure of disclosure. The movement brand of the kinds of use of Deepika Padukone’s voice, the governing instrument, became the licence argument itself, with the personality rights case law standing ready as the default remedy the moment that agreement is absent.

COMPARATIVE SNAPSHOTS: THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE EUROPEAN UNION

The United States addresses virtual influences through the Federal Trade Commission’s 2023 revision of its endorsements guide, that is effective from July of that year. The revised guide binds, and the definition of ‘endorser’ expressly includes virtual influencers and other fabricated personnel and clarifies that liability under the Federal Trade Commission Act can attach to the advertiser, the endorser, and any intermediary involved in procuring or publishing the endorsement. The American approach absorbs virtual influencers into a pre-existing technology-neutral definition rather than creating a separate category for them, and its enforcement sits within the Ordinary Federal Trade Commission at proceedings rather than in a separate advertising code.

The European Union has taken a different route through Article 50 of the Artificial Intelligence Act, which becomes applicable from August 2026. This article imposes a general transparency obligation on deployers of AI systems that generate the fixed or manipulate audio, image or video content that would falsely appear authentic and requires disclosure of the content’s artificial origin. The European Commission’s draft guidelines published in 2026 confirm that this application extends to any system interacting directly with people, including systems performing tasks autonomously subject to a lighter touch disclosure obligation where the content is evidently artistic or frictional in character; non-compliance carries penalties of up to 15 million euros or 3% of global turnover. Whichever is higher places real financial ways behind the disclosure requirement.

 Compared to these two models, India’s position is distinctive in one respect and weaker in another. It is distinctive because the Advertising Standard Council’s guidelines, so far as the available record shows there is the only major regulatory instrument anywhere to define virtual influences as standalone terms rather than holding the phenomena into broader categories, such as “endorser” or “deepfake”. is weaker because of the difference in definational persistence in self-regulatory code with no statutory force, while the American and European instruments both directly apply legal consequences in the respective Federal Trade Commission Act and under directly applicable European Union regulation. India’s statutory instrument, the Consumer Protection Act Information Technology rules, does carry penal and self-harbour consequences, but neither uses the term ‘virtual influences’ at all, living the country’s most precise definition of a phenomenon in the least inforceable instrument.

ASSESSMENT: GAPS IN THE INDIAN FRAMEWORK

Three observations follow from the preceding analysis: first, India regulates virtual influences through a patchwork rather than a design that is the Advertising Standard Council’s sense of regulatory guidelines, which supplies the only precise definition and most influences the spirit of the disclosure rules. The central consumer protection authorities said the guidelines supply penal consequences built around a human-centric definition of “endorsement”, and the amended Information Technology rules apply a platform-facing labelling obligation drafted for the fix, generally not for advertising specification. No single instrument does all three jobs, and no instrument coordinates these two.

Second, the strongest protection currently available against a deceptive virtual persona is personality rights litigation, which is available only when a real individual’s identity has been appropriated or copied and offers no remedy at all against a whole frictional persona like Kyra or Naina Avtr; however, effectively such a person might mislead consumers and the nature of the endorsement they are seen. For that category, consumer protection law is the only available route yet. The central definition of endorsement was not drafted with non-sentient application to virtual influences. Resting on an interpretive extension the statute’s text does not compel.

Third, the child protection dimension of this problem remains largely unaddressed. Virtual influencers are frequently designed with youthful aspirational personas precisely because those designs are commercially effective with younger audiences, yet the existing special guidelines for child-directed advertising were not framed with synthetic personnel in views and do not apply nearly because a person is a design audience without the underlying product itself being child-directed.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Lastly, the targeted set of reforms would close most of the gaps identified above without requiring a holy, known regulatory architecture. The first, section 2(18) of the Consumer Protection Act 2019, or a clarifying guideline issued by the Central Consumer Protection Authority under its existing section 18 power, should be any commercial content published through an artificial intelligence-generated or virtual person to constitute an introduction of the purpose of the act irrespective of the person having the incapacity to hold a genuine opinion or experience, with liability expressly fixed on the natural or juristic person operating the persona.

Second, the Advertising Standards Council’s virtual influencer definition and its due disclosure requirements deserve incorporation into the authorities’ statutory guidelines, converting a self-regulatory best practice into an enforceable obligation backed by the penalties already available under Section 21 rather than living compliance dependent on an industry body’s non-binding code.

Third, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Central Consumer Protection Authority should issue joint clarification specifying that a single complaint disclosure label meeting and agreed common standard satisfies both the synthetic media labelling obligation under the amended Information Technology Rules and the advertising disclosure obligation under the Consumer Protection Act framework, removing the present risk of 2 inconsistent complaint standards applying to the same post.

Fourth, the child-directed advertising guideline should be amended to expressly cover virtual

personas designed with youthful characteristics that are likely to appeal disproportionately to

minors, regardless of whether the underlying product is itself marketed to children.

Fifth, building on the injunctive practice the Delhi and Bombay High Courts have already

developed, a statutory presumption should be codified requiring prior written consent before any

real person’s likeness, voice or mannerisms may be used to construct a persistent artificial

intelligence persona for commercial purposes, giving litigants and brands an ex ante rule rather

than leaving the position to be worked out case by case after the fact.

CONCLUSION

Virtual influencers sit at the intersection of three legal domains that developed independently of

one another and of the technology now testing them. Consumer protection law offers penal

consequences but a definition built for a human endorser. Constitutional free speech doctrine

offers a well-developed test for deceptive commercial speech but was never asked to consider a

persona with no rights of its own. Synthetic media regulation offers a broad labelling obligation.

but was designed around disinformation and impersonation, not brand endorsement. Personality rights law offers the sharpest remedy available anywhere in this field, but only for

the narrower set of cases where a real person’s identity, rather than a wholly invented one, has

been borrowed.

Running through all four is the same constitutional and administrative law. Observation: a virtual influencer is never the object of regulation, because it is never a legal subject. Every rule examined in this paper, whatever its formal target, is in substance a rule about the human and corporate actors who design, operate and profit from these personas. Until the Consumer Protection Authority, or Parliament, amends the statutory definition of endorsement to say so. directly, India will continue to regulate virtual influencers by analogy, an approach that has so far

kept pace with a market still concentrated in a handful of well-known personas, but one that will

come under increasing strain as the technology becomes cheaper and the personas multiply.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CONSTITUTION AND STATUTES

  • The Constitution of India, art 19(1)(a), art 19(2).
  • Consumer Protection Act, 2019, ss 2(9), 2(18), 2(28), 10, 18, 21.
  • Information Technology Act, 2000, s 79.
  • Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, as amended by MeitY notification dated 10 February 2026, rr 2(1)(wa), 3(3)(a)(ii).

REGULATORY GUIDELINES AND INSTRUMENTS

  • Central Consumer Protection Authority, Guidelines for Prevention of Misleading Advertisements and Endorsements for Misleading Advertisements, 2022 (notified 9 June 2022), Guidelines 8, 12, 13.
  • Advertising Standards Council of India, Guidelines for Influencer Advertising in Digital Media (2021, as periodically updated, including Addendum 2 on health and finance influencers and the 2026 update on AI-generated and virtual influencers).
  • Department of Consumer Affairs, Government of India, “Endorsement Know-Hows” (January 2023) and supplementary guidance for health-sector influencers (August 2023).
  • Federal Trade Commission (United States), Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, 16 C.F.R. Part 255, as revised, effective 26 July 2023.
  • Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act), art 50; European Commission, Draft Guidelines on Transparency Obligations under Article 50 AI Act (8 May 2026).

CASES

  • Hamdard Dawakhana v Union of India, AIR 1960 SC 554.
  • Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Pvt Ltd v Union of India (1985).
  • Tata Press Ltd v Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd, (1995) 5 SCC 139.
  • Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, Amritsar v Som Nath Dass, (2000) 4 SCC 146.
  • Ram Jankijee Deity v State of Bihar, (1999) 5 SCC 50.
  • Mohd Salim v State of Uttarakhand, 2017 SCC OnLine Utt 367.
  • Titan Industries Ltd v Ramkumar Jewellers (Delhi High Court, 2012).
  • Amitabh Bachchan v Rajat Nagi & Ors, CS(COMM) 819/2022, 2022 SCC OnLine Del 4110.
  • Anil Kapoor v Simply Life India & Ors, CS(COMM) 652/2023, 2023 SCC OnLine Del 6914.
  • Jaikishan Kakubhai Saraf alias Jackie Shroff v The Peppy Store & Ors, 2024 SCC OnLine Del 3664.
  • Arijit Singh v Codible Ventures LLP & Ors, Commercial IP Suit (L) No. 23443 of 2024 (Bombay High Court, 2024).
  • Karan Johar v India Pride Advisory (P) Ltd, 2025 SCC OnLine Bom 546.
  • Aishwarya Rai Bachchan v Aishwaryaworld.com, CS(COMM) 956/2025 (Delhi High Court, 2025).
  • Indian Medical Association & Anr v Union of India & Ors, Writ Petition (Civil) No. 645/2022, Order dated 7 May 2024 (Supreme Court of India).

SECONDARY SOURCES

  • AZB & Partners,”The Regulatory Evolution of Influencer Advertising in India” (2023).
  • Khaitan Legal Associates,Disclosures in India” (2026).
  • “Legal Implications of Social Media Influencers: Endorsements and Sansa Legal, and AI Influencers” (2026).
  • “ASCI Influencer Advertising Guidelines 2026: Disclosure Rules for Paid Content Argus Partners,
  • “Advertisers and Endorsers under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.
  • “Forbes India, Driving the AI Influencer Trend?” (2024).
  • “I, Influencer: The Rise of Virtual Characters on Social Media” (2026); “What Is Storyboard18, Controversies?” (2025).
  • “Are AI or Virtual Influencers the Answer to Avoiding Scandals and Wikipedia, “Kyra (virtual influencer).”
  • Freshfields, “India Targets Deepfakes and AI-Generated Content: Key Changes under MeitY’s 2026 Amendments to the IT Rules” (2026).
  • AZB & Partners (2025). “MeitY Proposes New Media Labelling Obligations under Intermediary Rules”
  • LawChakra, and Likeness” (2025).
  • “AI and Personality Rights: Bollywood’s Legal Battle to Protect Celebrity Identity Bar and Bench,
  • “When Identity Becomes Property: Understanding Personality Rights” (2026).
  • Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, Dispute Resolution Blog, “Personality Rights in India in the Age of AI” (2026).
  • IJLSSS (2025). “Artificial Intelligence and Legal Personhood: A Critical Analysis in the Indian Context”
  • DLA Piper (2023). “Federal Trade Commission Announces Changes to the Endorsement Guidelines”
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[1] ‘Shriomani Gurudwara Prabandhak … vs Shri Som Nath Dass & Ors on 29 March, 2000.’

[2] ‘Ram Jankijee Deities & Ors vs State Of Bihar And Ors on 11 May, 1999’.’Shriomani

[3] ‘Mohd Salim v State of Uttarakhand’.’Ram

[4] Hima Kohli and Hima Kohli, ‘Indian Medical Association vs Union Of India on 2 April, 2024’.

[5] Hamdard Dawakhana and Lal Kuan, ‘Controlling Objectionable Advertisements: Hamdard Dawakhana v. Union of India’.

[6] ‘Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) … vs Union Of India & Ors. Etc. Etc on 6 December, 1984’.

[7] ‘Tata Press Limited vs Mahanagar Telephone-Nigam Limited & … on 3 August, 1995.’

[8] Navin Chawla and Navin Chawla, ‘Amitabh Bachchan vs Rajat Nagi & Ors on 25 November, 2022’.

[9] Prathiba M Singh and Prathiba M Singh, ‘Anil Kapoor vs Simply Life India & Ors on 20 September, 2023’.Navin

[10] Sanjeev Narula and Sanjeev Narula, ‘Jaikishan Kakubhai Saraf Alias Jackie … vs The Peppy Store & Ors. on 15 May, 2024. ‘2024.’Prathiba

[11] RI Chagla and RI Chagla, ‘Arijit Singh vs Codible Ventures Llp on 26 July, 2024’.

[12] RI Chagla and RI Chagla, ‘Karan Johar vs Indiapride Advisory Pvt Ltd on 13 June, 2024’.

[13] ‘Aishwarya Rai Bachchan vs Aishwaryaworld.Com & Ors on 9 September, 2025.’RI

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