Understanding copyright issues entailing deepfakes in India

Abstract

With increase in the scope, scale and sophistication of digitisation, the line between fake and real is blurred. In the recent years, digital disinformation in the form of fake news or morphed pictures/videos has become a new normal on internet. Adding to this list are the artificial intelligence generated-Deepfakes. The wide use of deepfakes in cinematography, fake pornography, political campaigns etc. have fascinated the legal fraternity across the globe. Deepfakes raises many legal alarms including threat to privacy, cyber security, right to publicity, forgery, defamation, criminal intimidation, sedition, copyright infringement, copyright protection, authorship and the list continues. The concern of this article is to understand the copyright issues embroiled in deepfakes in Indian context. The first point of discussion is the sustainability of the claim of copyright infringement or right of publicity arising out of the modification and republication of original work to create deepfakes. Secondly, the creative use of deepfakes like in advanced cinematography would require copyright protection to the author. However, the issue is identifying the author of the deepfake – is it artificial intelligence or the human causing its creation.