INTRODUCTION
Brands used to hire people to sell products. Increasingly, they are hiring characters that do not exist. Virtual influencers — computer-generated personas built through CGI, animation, and generative AI — now run brand campaigns, gather followings in the millions, and post daily content indistinguishable from a real person’s feed. Somewhere behind each post sits a studio, a marketing team, or an AI developer pulling the strings, but the audience rarely sees them.
India’s influencer economy has adopted this technology enthusiastically, yet no law here was written with a non-human endorser in mind. The Consumer Protection Act, the CCPA’s advertising guidelines, and ASCI’s disclosure code all assume that there is an accountable person on the other end of the endorsement. A virtual influencer offers no such person, which is exactly where the legal difficulty begins. This piece traces how India’s existing consumer protection and advertising framework, along with recent case law on AI-generated personas, holds up against that gap.
Unlike conventional social media influencers, virtual influencers derive their influence not from personal experience but from algorithmic design, strategic branding, and audience engagement engineered by human creators. This shift raises important questions regarding legal accountability and consumer trust.
While virtual influencers offer businesses greater creative control and commercial efficiency, they also challenge long-established legal principles founded on human accountability. Unlike conventional influencers, AI-generated personalities cannot independently verify product claims, exercise personal judgment, or assume legal responsibility for misleading endorsements. As brands increasingly rely on these digital personalities to influence consumer behaviour, important questions arise regarding transparency, consumer trust, and the allocation of legal liability within India’s evolving digital marketplace.
THE CONCEPT OF VIRTUAL INFLUENCERS
A virtual influencer has no independent legal existence. It cannot sign a contract, cannot exercise judgment, and cannot be sued in its own name, yet it endorses products, runs campaigns, and shapes what millions of people buy. Every post is designed, approved, and published by the human actors operating behind the virtual persona, including developers, advertising agencies, and brand owners.
That gap between visible influence and invisible accountability is the central legal problem. Consumers frequently cannot tell whether they are watching a genuine testimonial or a scripted performance. Where a brand fails to disclose that its “influencer” is artificially generated, consumers end up relying on opinions that were never actually held by anyone. That directly undercuts the idea of informed consumer choice underlying consumer protection law.
LEGAL FRAMEWORK GOVERNING VIRTUAL INFLUENCERS IN INDIA
India has no dedicated statute for AI-generated endorsers. Virtual influencers are governed, by default, through the ordinary consumer protection and advertising apparatus.
The Consumer Protection Act, 2019 prohibits unfair trade practices and misleading advertisements, and its definitions are broad enough to capture a virtual influencer’s promotional content, even though the persona itself has no standing to be proceeded against.[1]
The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA), established under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, possesses the power to investigate misleading advertisements and impose penalties upon manufacturers, advertisers, endorsers, and publishers.[2] However, the statutory framework does not expressly identify liability where endorsements are made through AI-generated virtual personalities. This legislative silence creates uncertainty regarding the attribution of responsibility in cases involving deceptive digital marketing.
The 2022 Guidelines for Prevention of Misleading Advertisements layer a due diligence requirement on top of this, obliging every endorser to verify a product claim before making it. That obligation was plainly written with a human endorser’s judgment in mind; a virtual influencer cannot “verify” anything, so whatever diligence exists sits entirely with the humans writing its script.
ASCI’s Influencer Advertising Guidelines fill part of this gap: they specifically require virtual influencers to disclose that they are not real people, in addition to the standard #Ad tag.[3] In practice, this disclosure requirement is far less known, and far less enforced, than the sponsorship label most consumers now recognise on sight.
Indian courts have begun addressing the adjacent problem of AI misusing a real person’s identity, even without a dedicated virtual-influencer statute. In Anil Kapoor v Simply Life India & Ors, the Delhi High Court restrained the unauthorised use of the actor’s name, voice, and likeness through AI tools, deepfakes, and face-morphing for commercial gain, recognising that generative AI can appropriate a person’s persona in ways ordinary passing-off law was never designed for.[4] The reasoning translates directly to virtual influencers built to resemble real individuals, even where the affected person is a public figure rather than a party to the dispute.
Despite these judicial developments, India’s legal framework continues to regulate virtual influencers only through existing consumer protection, advertising, and intellectual property laws. There remains no dedicated legislation specifically governing AI-generated endorsers or determining liability arising from their commercial activities. This regulatory gap creates uncertainty regarding disclosure obligations, legal accountability, and enforcement, making legislative intervention increasingly necessary as artificial intelligence assumes a larger role in digital advertising.
CONSUMER PROTECTION, ADVERTISING ETHICS AND LEGAL LIABILITY
The central concern with virtual influencers is straightforward: they can convincingly promote a product they have never used. A virtual influencer selling a health supplement or a skincare product cannot independently confirm the claims it makes, which means every such endorsement is, by construction, secondhand. Where the claim turns out to be false, liability has to run upstream, to the brand that commissioned the campaign, the agency that wrote the script, or the developer that built the model, since the CCPA has no one else to proceed against.[5]
Ethical advertising does not stop at disclosing that a post is sponsored; it also requires disclosing what kind of “person” is making the claim. ASCI’s rule requiring virtual influencers to identify themselves as non-human exists precisely for this reason, though weak awareness of the rule means many campaigns simply do not comply.[6]
Identity itself is a separate battleground. Several virtual influencers are deliberately built to resemble real celebrities in face, voice, or mannerism, inviting disputes over personality rights, passing off, and trademark. Foreign courts confronted an early version of this problem decades ago: in Vanna White v Samsung Electronics America Inc, an advertisement using a robot dressed and posed like the television personality was held to infringe her right of publicity, even without using her name or image directly, because the imitation traded closely enough on her identity.[7] Indian courts, through Anil Kapoor, have now reached a similar conclusion using personality rights and passing off, suggesting a workable route for challenging a virtual influencer that too closely mimics a real individual.
Finally, virtual influencers that interact with followers, adjust responses, and track engagement are processing personal data at scale, which brings the brand operating them within the consent and purpose-limitation obligations of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.[8] Campaigns running through social platforms also engage the intermediary liability framework under the Information Technology Act, 2000.[9] None of these obligations is unmanageable alone; together, they form a compliance map with no single point of entry.
Beyond privacy concerns, the increasing deployment of AI-generated influencers also raises questions relating to algorithmic transparency and consumer autonomy.[10] Most consumers remain unaware that the recommendations, conversations, and promotional content presented by virtual influencers are strategically generated through artificial intelligence and behavioural analytics.[11] Meaningful disclosure regarding AI-generated commercial communications would enable consumers to make informed purchasing decisions while promoting greater transparency, ethical advertising practices, and public confidence in emerging technologies.[12]
CONCLUSION
Virtual influencers are no longer a futuristic innovation but an established feature of India’s digital advertising ecosystem. While the existing consumer protection and advertising framework provides partial safeguards, it does not comprehensively regulate AI-generated endorsements. The law must evolve to explicitly define the responsibilities of developers, advertisers, agencies, and digital platforms operating virtual influencers. A balanced regulatory framework that promotes transparency, ethical advertising, and accountability will not only safeguard consumer interests but also encourage responsible technological innovation in India’s rapidly expanding digital economy.
Looking ahead, India has an opportunity to establish a balanced legal framework that promotes innovation without compromising consumer rights. Explicit statutory recognition of virtual influencers, mandatory AI-disclosure requirements, and clearly defined liability standards would provide greater legal certainty for businesses while strengthening consumer protection. As artificial intelligence continues to transform digital advertising, the law must evolve alongside technological advancement to ensure that innovation remains transparent, accountable, and firmly rooted in public trust.
Author(s) Name: Mahak Singh (Chanderprabhu Jain College of Higher Studies and School of Law, GGSIPU, New Delhi)
References:
[1]Consumer Protection Act 2019, ss 2(1), 2(28), 2(47).
[2]Consumer Protection Act 2019, ss 21, 89.
[3]Advertising Standards Council of India, ‘Guidelines for Influencer Advertising in Digital Media’ (ASCI, 27 May 2021) <https://www.ascionline.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/GUIDELINES-FOR-INFLUENCER-ADVERTISING-IN-DIGITAL-MEDIA.pdf> accessed 8 July 2026.
[4]Anil Kapoor v Simply Life India & Ors CS(COMM) 652/2023 (Delhi High Court, 20 September 2023).
[5]Consumer Protection Act 2019.
[6]Advertising Standards Council of India, ‘Guidelines for Influencer Advertising in Digital Media’ (n 3).
[7]Vanna White v Samsung Electronics America Inc 971 F2d 1395 (9th Cir 1992).
[8]Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, ss 4, 6.
[9]Information Technology Act 2000, s 79.
[10] UNESCO, Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (adopted 23 November 2021).
[11] NITI Aayog, ‘Responsible AI #AIForAll: Approach Document for India Part 1 – Principles for Responsible AI’ (February 2021) < https://www.niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2021-02/Responsible-AI-22022021.pdf > accessed 8 July 2026
[12]OECD, Recommendation of the Council on Artificial Intelligence, OECD/LEGAL/0449 (adopted 22 May 2019).