Introduction
Where digital identity was once straightforward, the metaverse has propelled it into complex personas, replete with faces and voices, each with its own unique personality. A key question surfaces: who owns these digital humans? The ownership depends on how they were created and what the role of the platform is, including the laws of the jurisdiction. Though between 2024 and 2025, jurisdictions around the world have begun setting frameworks that define avatar ownership, much remains murky for creators, businesses and platforms just beginning to settle this digital frontier.
Main Blog
Avatars as Hybrid Legal Entities
Digital avatars represent the crossroad of intellectual property and personality rights: creative works protected by copyright, brand identities shielded by trademark law, and personal likenesses governed by personality rights. The intersection of these fields resists easy legal categorization and gives rise to novel ownership disputes.
When a user creates an avatar themselves in external software, they usually retain the copyright. In contrast, most avatars created in-world in Meta Horizon Worlds and Roblox are principally owned by the platforms, which grant creators some limited rights while reserving ownership in the core infrastructure. And when the avatar is AI-created, things get even murkier. According to Indian copyright law, the author of computer-generated works is “the person who causes the work to be created,” but it is not at all clear who that will be when an AI system creates content from minimal prompts.
Copyright and AI-Generated Content
Traditional copyright offers only limited protection for AI-created avatars. The Thaler v. Perlmutter decision of the U.S. Copyright Office solidifies this idea: content created purely by AI, with little or no human authorship, does not gain copyright protection. These are also issues faced by countries like India. In ANI Media v. OpenAI filed in November 2024, the case is pending before the Delhi High Court-questions circle around whether using the training data amounts to copyright infringement and whether the outcomes through AI itself have protection.
Distinctive designs for avatars can be copyrighted, containing unique visual elements, animations, and personalities, provided there is proper documentation of the creation. Most creators fail to register their works.
Personality Rights and Recent Legislation
Recent legislative developments recognize that likeness, voice, and image are protected interests separate from copyright. Tennessee's ELVIS Act, effective 2024, expanded publicity rights to include AI-generated voices and digital recreations. California enacted AB 1836, effective January 1, 2025, which prohibits the use of digital replicas of deceased performers in expressive works without consent from estates or families. AB 2602, signed September 2024, and also effective January 1, 2025, establishes regulations for performer contracts involving digital replicas. New York's SB 7676B, signed December 13, 2024, and effective January 1, 2025, requires that digital replica contracts include reasonably specific descriptions of planned use and performer representation.
In June 2025, Denmark proposed an amendment to its Copyright Act that would give citizens copyright over their likeness, allowing them to request takedowns and seek damages over nonconsensual deepfakes. Performing artists were given protection for 50 years beyond their death.
In India, courts have extended constitutional privacy rights to include digital identity. The landmark case Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India, 2017, held that privacy is essential to autonomy. The Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi, Delhi High Court, 2022, decision protected voices and likenesses from unauthorized commercial use, signalling that personality rights extend to anyone whose identity is commercially exploited without consent.
Platform Control and Interoperability
The terms of service for many platforms maintain that ownership of an avatar is limited, even while making a creator feel in control. In reality, most metaverse platforms retain ownership of the underlying code and templates, and often the avatar itself. Making avatars interoperable, so a single creation could be used across multiple platforms, would solve many of these ownership disputes, but this remains technically and legally complicated because IP frameworks are out of sync.
AI-Generated Avatars and Personality Rights Conflicts
Synthetic avatars, created by training on real faces, raise serious personality rights issues. Even "transformative" stylized images infringe publicity rights if they evoke a recognizable identity or imply false endorsement. Courts focus more on public perception rather than just physical likeness.
The Indian Information Technology Act, 2000, criminalises identity theft and related offences (Sections 66-C to 66-E, 67-A), which could include deepfakes. Cross-border enforcement remains a major gap.
NFTs, Blockchain, and Ownership
Minting avatars as NFTs establishes verifiable ownership on the blockchain, but purchasing an NFT does not automatically confer copyright. Most NFT smart contracts give display or resale rights but not reproduction and rights to derivative works in practice. That nuance catches many buyers by surprise.
Collaborative Creation Challenges
Most virtual influencers are therefore the product of collaboration. While Indian copyright law allows joint authorship, without appropriate agreements quantifying the respective share of each collaborator, together with license grant authority, disputes will inevitably arise. Attributing moral rights and maintaining the integrity of the work adds complexity to this ownership structure.
Conclusion
Ownership of an avatar would depend on a variety of factors including the method of creation, platform, jurisdiction, and executed contracts. The creators need a variety of legal tools: copyright for original designs, trademarks for brand avatars, explicit ownership agreements with platforms/collaborators, and personality rights rooted in privacy doctrines.
Global clarity is emerging through statutes like the ELVIS Act, California AB 1836 and AB 2602, New York SB 7676B, and Denmark's proposal for 2025. In India, courts extend constitutional and IP doctrines to AI content; however, this needs immediate codification.
Ownership is going to be tiered: copyright for creative expression, trademarks for commercial identity, personality rights for likeness/voice, and contracts for use terms. The main task is one of clarification as to who holds what existing rights and how they transfer in the digital environment. Progress will require proactive statutory and contractual clarity that guides creators, platforms, and users.
References
- Justice K.S.Puttaswamy(Retd) And Anr. vs Union Of India And Ors. (2017 (10) SCC 1)
- Amitabh Bachchan v. Rajat Nagi and Ors. (Delhi High Court, 2022) - https://www.khuranaandkhurana.com/2023/01/14/personality-rights-an-examination-of-amitabh-bachchan-v-rajat-nagi-and-ors
- ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v. OpenAI Inc. & Anr. (Delhi High Court, filed November 2024, ongoing)
- Information Technology Act, 2000 (India) - Sections 66-C to 66-E, 67-A.
- Copyright Act, 1957 (India) - Sections 2(d), 13, 17, 52, 57.
- Thaler v. Perlmutter (U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. Circuit, 2025).
- Tennessee - Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security (ELVIS) Act, 2024.
- California Assembly Bill 1836 (AB 1836).
- California Assembly Bill 2602 (AB 2602).
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-avatars-ai-influencers-who-owns-rights-digital-personas-c1ele/
- https://www.lawjournal.digital/jour/article/view/485
- https://patentpc.com/blog/the-rise-of-digital-avatars-and-ip-who-owns-identity-in-the-metaverse
- https://www.mofo.com/resources/insights/250922-digital-avatars-deep-dive-series-navigating
- https://ksandk.com/media-and-entertainment/personality-rights-in-india-life-legacy-and-the-law/
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/387899668_The_Rise_of_AI_Avatars_Legal_Personhood_Rights_and_Liabilities_in_an_Evolving_Metaverse
- https://lawfullegal.in/personality-rights-and-ai-generated-content-the-emerging-jurisprudence/
- https://www.puthrans.com/who-owns-ai-generated-content-copyright-authorship-under-indian-law/
- https://www.legaleraonline.com/ai/ai-identity-and-law-personality-rights-in-the-digital-age-of-ai-and-data-privacy-comparative-study-of-india-and-us-972965