From a legal point of view, can using the names and images of real people in a chatbot be a problem?
Character.AI, a chatbot app and service, is currently facing two lawsuits in the US over, among other things, allegations of incitement to violence in conversations had by minors through this service, which allows the creation of fictional characters generated by artificial intelligence and the selection of details such as their name, image, voice and conversation style.
Asked by OBSERVADOR about the implications of using people's names and images in this context, João Assunção, Managing Associate at NLP, clearly states: ‘the rights of each individual include the possibility of preventing someone from using and reproducing, without consent, their name and image for commercial purposes, including entertainment purposes, such as those at issue here’. Thus, according to the lawyer, ‘under Portuguese law’, anyone who sees their name and image used as characters in chatbots ‘could, in theory, seek to sue the company that operates the platform’, assuming that the use is made without the authorisation of those targeted.
