The legal challenge is therefore no longer confined to conventional unauthorised endorsement; rather, it concerns whether Indian law can adequately protect athlete identity when misuse takes the form of synthetic impersonation, false digital affiliation, or platform-enabled commercial exploitation.

Indian law continues to lack a dedicated statutory framework governing personality rights. Protection instead emerges through constitutional values of dignity and autonomy (right to privacy under article 21), passing-off logic (Sections 38, 38A and 38B of the Copyright Act, 1957), goodwill (Section 27 of the Trade Marks Act, 1999), online impersonation (sections 66C and 66D of the Information Technology Act, 2000) and judicial recognition (right of publicity as a facet of the right to privacy) that a persona may carry proprietary and commercial value.[i] This fragmented framework becomes particularly visible in sport, where athlete identity is constantly circulated through broadcasts, rankings, commentary, fantasy interfaces, promotions, and fan content. Such ubiquity may create the mistaken impression that athlete identity is freely available for all downstream uses. Yet the commercial appropriation of persona remains analytically distinct from the public availability of sporting facts or match statistics.

In D.M. Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. v. Baby Gift House, where a few shops in Delhi were selling China-made Daler Mehndi dolls singing portions of his popular songs without any licence or permission, the Delhi High Court recognised the commercial distinctiveness of persona. Similarly, in Titan Industries Ltd. v. Ramkumar Jewellers, unauthorised use of celebrity imagery in advertising was treated as capable of misleading the public into believing endorsement or affiliation.[ii] More recently, courts have expanded this protection in response to emerging forms of digital exploitation.

In Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India & Ors.,[iii] the Delhi High Court recognised the commercial value of the actor’s name, likeness, image, voice, and other elements of his persona and granted injunctive relief against their unauthorised use through artificial intelligence, machine learning, deepfakes, face morphing, GIFs, and similar technological tools. Similarly, in Aishwarya Rai Bachchan v. Aishwaryaworld.com & Ors.,[iv] the Delhi High Court recognised an individual’s right to control and protect the commercial exploitation of their name, image, likeness, and other personality attributes and restrained their unauthorised use and misappropriation through digital platforms and technological tools, including artificial intelligence.

Deepfakes and the 2026 IT Rules Framework

Following the amendments introduced by the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026, to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021,[v] including the insertion of Rule 2(1)(wa) defining “synthetically generated information” and Rule 3(3)(a)(i) prescribing intermediary due-diligence obligations in relation to unlawful synthetic content, that question must now be examined through the combined lens of personality-rights doctrine, false endorsement principles, and intermediary due diligence.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s explanatory document on FAQs accompanying the 2026 amendments states that the category is confined to audio, visual, and audio-visual content that is artificially or algorithmically created, generated, modified, or altered, appears real or authentic, and portrays an individual or event in a way likely to be perceived as indistinguishable from a real person or real-world event.[vi] The FAQ also clarifies that this includes deepfakes, AI-generated or AI-altered images and videos, and voice cloning where that realism threshold is met. This is especially significant in the context of sports because the modern athlete is vulnerable not only to static misuse of image but also to cloned voice, fabricated interviews, fake endorsements, and synthetic clips simulating conduct or approval.

At the same time, the 2026 framework specifically notes exclusions for routine or good-faith editing, formatting, enhancement, technical correction, colour adjustment, noise reduction, transcription, and compression, so long as the content does not materially distort or misrepresent the substance, context, or meaning of the underlying material.[vii] That exclusion is doctrinally important, as it prevents athlete personality protection from swallowing legitimate media practices such as routine sports editing, accessibility enhancement, or non-deceptive production work. The regulatory concern is not digital alteration as such, but deceptive realism and material misrepresentation.

Intermediary Liability and Platform Obligations

For an athlete’s personality rights, the real significance of the amendment lies in Rule 3(3)(a)(i).[viii] The amended Rules require intermediaries that facilitate the creation or dissemination of synthetic content to deploy reasonable and appropriate technical measures, including automated tools, to prevent unlawful synthetic content. MeitY clarified that the 2026 package is not confined to takedown alone; it combines definitional clarity, exclusions for non-deceptive uses, intermediary due diligence for unlawful synthetic content, labelling and provenance requirements for permissible synthetic content, and tighter grievance-response timelines.[ix] The law is thus building a layered compliance architecture around synthetic media rather than treating it solely as an after-the-fact tort problem. This matters for the sports industry because athlete identity misuse has moved from being merely a private injury to being a subject of platform design, detection, disclosure, and rapid response.

The urgency of the amended framework is equally important. Under the revised rules, unlawful information must be removed or disabled within three hours once “actual knowledge” is triggered in the legally prescribed manner; complaints must generally be acknowledged within twenty-four hours and resolved within seven days; and impersonation-related material, including artificially morphed content, attracts a two-hour response window.[x] The FAQ also clarifies that removal or disabling access through reasonable technical measures, automated tools, or other suitable mechanisms, when done in compliance with the Rules, does not by itself violate the conditions of Section 79(2) or cost an intermediary its safe harbour.[xi] That point is significant because it reduces the structural hesitation platforms might otherwise claim when responding to deepfake athlete endorsements or AI-cloned impersonation. 

Judicial Protection of Athlete Identity

The December 2025 Delhi High Court order in Mr. Sunil Gavaskar v. Cricket Tak (Crickettak557) and Ors., illustrates why this framework matters.[xii] The suit was framed as one seeking an injunction for infringement of copyright, performer’s rights, misappropriation of personality and publicity rights, unfair competition, and passing off. The Court restrained unauthorised use of Gavaskar’s name, image, likeness, and signature for commercial gain and also directed takedown of objectionable and infringing online content, including misuse through artificial intelligence and deepfake technology.

Similarly, the Delhi High Court has granted interim relief to Gautam Gambhir[xiii] restraining several social media users from creating or sharing unauthorised AI-generated content using his name, image, voice or other personal attributes. The court also directed Amazon and Flipkart, along with Google and Meta platforms, to remove objectionable content within 36 hours. Further, in Abhishek Sharma’s AI image case[xiv], the Delhi High Court examined the evolving scope of personality rights and how disputes now often blur the distinction between defamation and personality rights. These orders relied on the settled line of cases, thereby placing the athlete persona squarely within the broader jurisprudence protecting commercially valuable identity from unauthorised digital exploitation.[xv]

These contemporary athlete-personality cases align directly with the synthetic-media regime introduced in 2026. In fact, in Priety Zinta’s personality rights case[xvi], decided this month, she sought that social media intermediaries be directed to take down AI-generated deepfake and morphed content. The Bombay High Court, while granting the interim relief, also reminded online platforms of their legal obligation towards due diligence under the new rules and went a step ahead by instructing the actor to reach out to the court in case of non-compliance by intermediaries citing genuineness in case of future infringements.

Fantasy Sports, AI Cloning, and False Endorsements

Fantasy sports sharpen the doctrinal difficulty further. Some use of athlete names, profiles, and statistics may be referential or functionally necessary to gameplay, but the boundary becomes unstable when athlete identity is used not merely to identify players but to attract consumers, decorate interfaces, anchor campaigns, or imply endorsement. AI cloning intensifies this instability by allowing platforms or affiliates to move from reference to simulated approval. At that point, the issue is no longer confined to informational use of sporting data. It becomes one of false endorsement, misleading commercial association, and synthetic appropriation of persona. Titan Industries is especially useful here because its logic extends beyond conventional advertising; unauthorised commercial use of identity may mislead the public into believing affiliation or approval, and AI tools now make that deception more persuasive than static reproduction ever could.[xvii]

Towards a Statutory Framework for Athlete Personality Rights

The current legal reality is that India appears to be moving toward an IP-like enforcement architecture for persona without expressly codifying one. Athletes still lack a dedicated statutory image-right or publicity-right regime. Yet through judicial protection of commercially valuable identity and the intermediary obligations introduced by the 2026 synthetic-media framework, the law increasingly treats persona as an enforceable market interest rather than a merely reputational concern. The challenge for Indian law is no longer whether athlete personas deserve protection in the age of deepfakes, fantasy sports, and AI cloning; it is whether that protection can be systematised without collapsing into either under-enforcement or censorship by proxy.