Bombay HC Restrains AI Platforms from Arijit Singh’s Unauthorised Voice Cloning

In a relief to singer Arijit Singh, the Bombay High Court has recently restrained a clutch of AI firms and individuals from providing a tool to convert anyone’s voice into the Bollywood playback singer’s voice. He has approached the court to protect his personality rights.

Justice R.I. Chagla in his ex-parte order against several companies observed that these defendants are emboldening internet users to create counterfeit sound recordings and videos that misuse the plaintiff’s (Singh’s) character and identity.

The court has granted an injunction against all the parties till September 3 and has posted the hearing on September 2.


“In my view, creation of new audio or video content/songs/videos in the Plaintiff’s AI name/voice, photograph, image, likeness and persona without his consent and commercially using the same could potentially jeopardize the Plaintiff’s career/livelihood,” observed the court in its July 26 order.

Before the court’s order, counsel Hiren Kamod and Vaibhav Keni of law firm Legasis Partners appeared for the singer and argued that the respondents appear to be in the business of providing means and tools to their customers to unauthorizedly creating AI-generated voice models of celebrities and popular fictional characters.

“Permitting the defendants to continue exploit/violate the Plaintiff’s personality/publicity rights, without Plaintiff’s consent also jeopardizes the Plaintiff’s career as a performer/singer and his status of a celebrity,” argued Singh’s lawyers. “In so far as acts of defendant Nos.1,2 and 7 are concerned, the act of creating and disseminating videos (by using the name, photograph etc. of the Plaintiff) that instruct individuals on how to use unauthorized AI models to replicate a celebrity's voice such as Plaintiff without his consent cannot be shielded under the right of freedom of speech and expression,” added lawyers.

The petition filed by Arijit Singh names Codible Ventures LLP, 100x Engineers, Hugging Face Inc., Audimee Me, Go Green Tale, Godehope and Kreate among others were named as respondents.

Recently, other Bollywood actors such as Amitabh Bachchan, Jackie Shroff Anil Kapoor and singer Kumar Sanu have also approached the court to seek similar relief from various courts.