The “Vibe” Lawsuit: Can You Copyright an Aesthetic?
Deepfakes are testing the boundaries of personality and publicity rights. A US influencer dispute raises a different question: when no single photograph, logo or design is copied, can the law protect the identity created by an entire visual language? Together, these developments point to a larger challenge for fashion: protecting identity when identity itself becomes a commercial asset.
Fashion has always sold more than clothes.
It sells association. A particular face. A particular mood. A particular way of photographing a garment. A particular colour palette. A particular cultural reference. Sometimes, an entire world.
For decades, intellectual property strategy has largely approached that world through identifiable assets: trademarks, designs, photographs, copyright, licences and contracts.
But the commercial value of a fashion brand does not always sit neatly inside any one of those assets.
Increasingly, it sits between them.
That distinction is becoming more important as artificial intelligence makes it possible to reproduce a person’s appearance, voice or mannerisms without the person’s participation and as social-media creators build commercially valuable identities from combinations of visual choices that may individually be difficult to protect.
Two seemingly unrelated developments illustrate the problem.
The first is the rapidly developing litigation around AI-generated celebrity personas and deepfake endorsements.
The second is the much-discussed US litigation involving influencers Sydney Nicole Gifford and Alyssa Sheil, popularly described as a dispute over a “vibe.”
One involves a person whose identity is reproduced without authorisation.
The other involves an aesthetic that is alleged to have been reproduced without authorisation.
Together, they raise a much larger question:
What happens when the commercially valuable thing being copied is not an individual IP asset, but an identity built from many different assets?
Celebrity Personality Rights vs. Deepfake Endorsements
A celebrity endorsement has always depended on something more than a photograph.
Consumers do not pay attention merely because a particular image appears beside a product. They respond to the identity, reputation and associations of the person behind that image.
That makes AI-generated impersonation commercially different from ordinary image piracy.
A deepfake can make a celebrity appear to endorse a product, attend an event, say something or participate in a campaign when none of those things actually happened.
The commercial deception is therefore not necessarily about copying a photograph.
It is about manufacturing an association.
Indian courts have increasingly had to address this problem.
In Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India & Ors., the Delhi High Court’s September 2023 order considered alleged misuse of the actor’s name, voice, image, likeness, manner of speaking, gestures and other attributes of his persona. The allegations included AI-generated images and videos, morphed content, merchandise, fake endorsements and other commercial uses. The Court granted an interim injunction protecting those attributes against specified forms of unauthorised exploitation, including through AI, machine learning, deepfakes and face morphing.
The significance lies in the breadth of the problem.
The court was not dealing only with a copyrighted photograph.
It was dealing with a commercial persona.
The court subsequently granted permanent injunctions against the defendants who had not filed written statements, finding that the unauthorised exploitation of Kapoor’s name, likeness, image, persona and related attributes warranted protection.
The issue has continued to evolve.
In Varun Dhawan v. Artist Booking Company & Ors., the Delhi High Court in May 2026 considered alleged unauthorised use of Dhawan’s name, image, voice, likeness and other attributes of his persona, including AI-generated content, deepfakes, AI chatbots and face morphing. The Court found a prima facie case and granted ex parte interim protection against specified defendants.
The order is particularly relevant to fashion because the court recognised the commercial significance of a celebrity’s persona in connection with endorsements and merchandise. It also addressed the risk that AI-generated material could create false or damaging impressions about the person.
The Bombay High Court’s 2026 proceedings involving Preity G. Zinta show another dimension. The case concerns alleged AI-generated deepfakes, manipulated images, chatbot personas and other digital content, with the claimant seeking protection for personality and publicity rights and related copyright and moral-rights interests. In July 2026, the Court recorded that the material before it demonstrated violations of the claimant’s asserted personality, publicity and moral rights in relation to specified content.
The emerging principle is commercially significant:
AI can reproduce the economic value of a person’s identity without reproducing the original creative asset from which that value was first derived.
That changes the enforcement problem.
The question is no longer simply:
“Was this photograph copied?”
It becomes:
“Has the commercial value of this person’s identity been appropriated?”
The “Vibe” Lawsuit: Can You Copyright an Aesthetic?
Now consider the opposite scenario.
There is no celebrity.
No deepfake.
No obvious counterfeit.
Instead, there is an aesthetic.
In Sydney Nicole LLC v. Sheil, influencer Sydney Nicole Gifford alleged that fellow influencer Alyssa Sheil had replicated the “neutral, beige and cream aesthetic” that Gifford described as part of her brand identity across numerous social-media posts promoting similar products.
The case attracted attention because the alleged copying was broader than a single image. It involved similarities across the presentation of the content, including styling and visual treatment. The US district court allowed certain claims to proceed while dismissing others at the pleading stage. It did not establish a general copyright in a “vibe” or aesthetic.
That distinction is critical.
Because the provocative question “Can you copyright a vibe?” is not really the legal question.
Copyright law does not generally protect an idea, concept or general aesthetic as such. India’s Copyright Office expressly states that copyright protects expression rather than ideas or concepts. The Copyright Act protects original artistic works, photographs and other qualifying works, but that does not mean that every stylistic characteristic contained within them becomes exclusively ownable.
So a fashion brand cannot simply say:
“We use beige, therefore nobody else can use beige.”
Nor can an influencer automatically claim ownership over a general minimalist aesthetic.
But that is not where the interesting IP question ends.
Because a particular photograph may be protected.
A logo may be protected.
A design may be protected.
A distinctive combination of branding elements may, depending on the facts and evidence, support trademark or passing-off arguments.
And an established reputation may itself become legally significant where another party’s conduct creates a false association or misrepresentation.
Indian trademark law expressly preserves passing-off actions for unregistered marks under Section 27(2), while Section 29 addresses infringement of registered marks, including certain uses in advertising and circumstances involving unfair advantage or detriment to a mark’s distinctive character or reputation.
The law therefore does not necessarily protect the vibe.
It can protect the rights that exist inside the vibe.
That distinction is much more important.
The Real Problem: The Law Protects Assets; Markets Create Identities
This is where the two disputes begin to converge.
Consider the structure of a contemporary fashion identity.
At the first level is the asset:
A photograph.
A logo.
A design.
A campaign video.
A trademark.
A piece of packaging.
At the second level is the association:
The celebrity associated with the campaign.
The designer associated with the aesthetic.
The influencer associated with a particular style.
The fashion house associated with a particular visual language.
And at the third level is the identity:
The overall impression created by repeatedly putting those elements together.
This third layer can be commercially powerful even though it may not correspond to one standalone IP right.
That is the difficult space.
A consumer may recognise a fashion house before consciously reading its name.
They may recognise a campaign from its lighting, styling and composition.
They may recognise an influencer from the way she presents products.
They may recognise a celebrity’s endorsement from the person’s face and voice.
Recognition is holistic. Legal rights are often fragmented.
That is why “identity” is becoming an increasingly important concept for IP strategy.
AI Makes the Identity Problem Bigger
AI does not merely make copying faster.
It changes what can be copied.
Traditional infringement often involved taking an identifiable asset: a photograph, logo, design, advertisement or video.
Generative AI can instead reproduce a pattern.
Imagine a luxury brand whose campaigns consistently use:
- muted colours;
- a particular architectural setting;
- a specific lighting style;
- a recurring model profile;
- minimalist styling;
- a particular camera composition; and
- a recognisable editorial tone.
An AI system could potentially generate new content that resembles the overall creative language without reproducing any one campaign image.
Whether that conduct infringes a particular legal right will depend on the facts and applicable law.
But the commercial question is already different.
Where is the copy?
If there is no single copied photograph, the enforcement team may struggle to identify the precise legal asset being infringed.
Yet consumers could still perceive an association.
This is the emerging tension between asset-based IP protection and identity-based brand value.
The Celebrity Is an Identity Without a Photograph. The Vibe Is an Identity Without a Logo.
That may be the simplest way to connect these two developments.
The deepfake problem demonstrates how a celebrity’s identity can become commercially exploitable independently of an authorised photograph or performance.
The “vibe” dispute demonstrates how a creator’s commercial identity may be built from a collection of creative choices that are individually difficult to monopolise.
Neither suggests that the law should create a universal property right over identity.
That would raise obvious concerns for competition, creativity and freedom of expression.
Fashion itself depends on inspiration.
Trends cannot function if every aesthetic development becomes proprietary.
The more useful question is therefore one of boundaries.
When does inspiration become copying?
When does similarity become misleading association?
When does a person’s likeness become unauthorised commercial exploitation?
When does a collection of ordinary creative choices become sufficiently distinctive to acquire commercial significance?
And what evidence is needed to demonstrate that distinction?
Those questions will become increasingly important as AI reduces the cost of generating lookalike content.
From IP Protection to Identity Architecture
The strategic response for fashion brands should not be an attempt to “copyright the vibe.”
It should be to understand the architecture of the identity they are building.
That means identifying the individual assets and the legal rights attached to them, but also documenting how those assets are consistently used.
For a luxury brand, that may mean preserving campaign archives, documenting distinctive visual elements, registering key trademarks and designs, carefully structuring photographer, agency, model and influencer agreements, and maintaining evidence of how consumers encounter the brand.
For celebrities and creators, it may mean treating name, image, voice, likeness, digital replicas and endorsement rights as part of a broader commercial-rights strategy rather than dealing with each infringement in isolation.
And for AI-generated content, provenance becomes increasingly important.
If a brand cannot establish what its original campaign looked like, who created it, who owns the rights, which elements were licensed and how it was distributed, identifying later appropriation becomes considerably harder.
The future of brand enforcement may therefore involve not just watching for copies, but mapping the identity from which those copies derive their commercial value.
The New Fashion IP Question
For years, the central question in fashion IP was:
“What do we own?”
The emerging question may be more complicated:
“What identity have we built, which parts of that identity are legally protectable, and what happens when someone else commercially appropriates the identity without copying any one asset?”
There is no single legal answer.
Personality rights may address one part.
Copyright another.
Trademark and passing off another.
Contracts, confidentiality, licensing and unfair-competition principles may address others, depending on the jurisdiction and facts.
The important development is therefore not the creation of a new universal “vibe right.”
It is the recognition that commercial value increasingly exists at the intersection of multiple rights.
The celebrity is an identity without a photograph.
The vibe is an identity without a logo.
And AI is making both identities easier to reproduce.
That is why the next generation of fashion IP strategy may have to move beyond protecting individual assets and start asking a more fundamental question:
How do you protect the identity that those assets create together?
Because the most valuable thing being copied may not be the photograph, the logo, the design or even the person.
It may be the identity that exists between them.
FASHION LAW JOURNAL INSIDER
Join designers, brand founders and fashion lawyers who get the biggest brand battles, IP fights and career moves in fashion law, straight to their inbox.
