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MusicFutures and the School of Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool are supporting a new PhD research project by Pinar Bakirtas, funded through their Performer’ Rights, Personality, and AI studentship. The PhD is being supervised by Professor Sabine Jacques, IP & AI Policy Lead and Director of the MusicFutures IP Clinic & Lab, and Dr Georgia Jenkins, Co-Director of the MusicFutures IP Clinic & Lab.

The project will examine the extent of UK performers’ rights protection in the context of artificial intelligence (AI), synthetic media, and digital replicas and consider whether it could include protection over recognizable features of performer’s identity.

Advances in AI have made it increasingly possible to generate synthetic performances that evoke distinctive characteristics of artists and performers such as their likeness and voice. As human artistic performances can be mimicked in a way that was not previously possible, the extent to which existing legal frameworks protect performers appears questionable. In the UK, as a projection of international treaties, the protection of performers extends to fixed, recorded performances rather than covering the performer’s identity as embodied in the performance. The legal question is beyond whether a protected recording has been reproduced; it relates to the use of identifiable personal features of a performer.

While legal mechanisms, such as passing off and breach of confidence within the UK may provide protection for markers of performers characteristics in a performance in certain situations, the extent of that protection remains fragmented and ambiguous. Other jurisdictions offer alternative approaches: personality rights in civil law systems protect the immaterial interests associated with a person’s personality, while US publicity rights protect the commercial interests derived from attributes of a person’s personality.

Pinar’s research aims to explore whether UK performers rights could evolve in light of the personality and publicity rights in other jurisdictions by offering protection to the characteristics of their persona as expressed in a performance especially in the age of growing synthetic media and AI-generated content.

Speaking about the Studentship, Pinar Bakirtas says:

“As a child, I always chose Musa from Winx, the fairy of music. It feels strangely fitting now as I begin a PhD on performers’ rights and AI. I am excited to explore how performers’ rights can evolve in response to AI and synthetic media, particularly in relation to the protection of identifiable aspects of performers’ personalities, such as their voice and image.”

Professor Sabine Jacques, IP & AI Policy Lead; Director of the MusicFutures IP Clinic & Lab added:

“Existing markets show limited sustainability (ABBA Voyage aside), revealing a fundamental problem: rights, technical infrastructure, and market design are mutually interdependent. Legal frameworks presuppose technical operationalisability; technical systems presuppose legal clarity; market fairness presupposes distributional analysis. Pinar’s project is foundational in paving the way towards the development of fair and sustainable markets for the reproduction of voice and likeness.”