The Ownership–Consent Divide: Copyright And Sexually Explicit Deepfakes

Abstract

Treating non-consensual sexual AI deepfakes and synthetically generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) as abuses of intellectual property laws correspond to a category error. Doctrinally, the Indian law on digital offences against women and children is tested both on the supply side (protection of the author’s economic rights overshadows the rights of the person represented) and the demand side (personality rights are an aspiring tool, mostly accessible to celebrities). At the procedural level, notice and takedown procedures mandated by section 79 IT Act do not respond to the harm caused by rapid circulation of deepfakes. Cross-border circulation, voracious consent frameworks, and data silos within Indian law enforcement create further response challenges. This paper argue that the Indian governmental framework does not suffer from a law contiguity deficit but an actionability deficit. To restore individual agency and autonomy in the face of deepfake-enabled harassment and molestation, the Indian law needs to identify the consent to sexual representation as an autonomous governing right under Article 21. The Indian law needs to build a new class of offenses against sexual autonomy and recommend targeted design obligation for tech firms which enable such harms.