Volume IV Special Issue I

DIGITAL AFTERLIVES OF ASPIRING ACTORS IN THE AGE OF GENERATIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Ishpreet Singh, Research Scholar at Himachal Pradesh National Law University Shimla (India) Download Manuscript doi.org/10.70183/lijdlr.2026.v4sil.02 By making it possible to extract and repurpose human performances outside of their original context, generative artificial intelligence has radically changed the lifecycle of creative expression. This study explores the mostly undetectable phenomena of aspiring actors’ digital afterlives, concentrating on poor performances, erased show reels, and rejected auditions that are nonetheless used as training data by AI systems. When incorporated into generative AI models that can mimic voice, facial emotions, and body gestures, such performances gain substantial economic and technological value even though they do not have much artistic or commercial value in the conventional cinema and theatre sectors. The paper makes the case that Indian copyright law, namely the Indian Copyright Act, 1957, excludes aspiring actors whose artistic expressions fall outside of conventional production structures by conceptualizing artists’ rights through the lens of market success and recognized performances. This results in a regulatory gap whereby unsuccessful or abandoned performances are technologically exploitable but not legally protected. These digital traces’ continued existence creates serious issues with consent, dignity, informational self-determination, and the right to be forgotten—issues that India’s current data protection and intellectual property laws are ill-suited to handle. It argues that a type of post-performance exploitation, in which creative labor survives its rejection but not its author, is made possible by the law’s inability to acknowledge the ongoing legal relevance of unsuccessful performances. The article’s conclusion advocates for a rethinking of performers’ rights that takes into consideration the ongoing digital presence of artistic expression, regardless of commercial or artistic success.