Style Without Safeguards: Generative AI, Warli Art and the Boundaries of Indian IP Protection

Introduction : Generative AI has made it possible to copy an artistic style in seconds. When a person enters ‘Warli-style painting’ into an image generator they get an image of a white-line scene of a village set against a terracotta background, with no one checking with the Warli community or paying them for the use of their style. Can Indian law be of any help in this respect? The answer is no, at least for now. To intensify the problem, we have two newly developed events. The first one is a working paper by the DPIIT (Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade) from December 2025 that suggests adopting a universal compulsory license which will require developers of AI to pay a copyright fee to rights holders. 

The second one is the Delhi High Court’s interim judgement of July 24, 2026 which ruled first that training of a language model on copyrighted text falls within the provisions of fair dealing exemption for personal/private use, which includes research. If the concept of fair dealing survives the appeal, no licensing agreement will be required for such training, while if the DPIIT proposal is accepted, copyright fee will not be paid to anybody.

The blogging describes Warli as a living tradition, explains how a model reproduces a style, examines copyright, geographical indicators (GI) and international law against the issue and finishes with a practical response.

Warli and the Reproduction of a Style

Warlis are an important tribe of Maharashtra. They are located mostly in the Dahanu and Talasari talukas of the Thane district, with groups in Gujarat, as well as in Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. Originally, painting was a women’s art carried out in the interior walls of huts. In the beginning, it was only married women (suvasinis) who painted their ritual symbols in white paste made from rice flour. The paint was applied in a red clay area, which contained a square (chauk) that referred to Palghat Devi, the goddess of fertility. The wedding paintings remain hidden until the end of the ceremony to get confirmation from the Bhagat (priest) regarding the deities involved in the wedding.

The tradition of Warli painting changed continuously. Since the late 1970s, Jivya Soma Mashe started painting the daily life of the Warlis outside the ritual practices and transferred the art onto paper. The practice is now performed mostly by men. Warli has also obtained the registered GI called ‘Warli Painting’ from the Geographical Indications Registry No. 239. The application for the GI was filed in June 2011 and the GI was certified in March 2014. 

The ability of a machine to produce in a specific style results from its ability to recognize the features of the style, namely lines, colour palettes, and composition, and the simple nature of Warli style: figures representing people and animals are made from triangles, the palette consists of white patterns on the brown background, while the subject matter involves the themes of marriage ritual, agricultural activities, and dancing. The ‘Ghibli-style’ phenomenon of 2025 demonstrated that the Indian legislation protects the separate works, but not the overall style. In contrast to Ghibli, the work of Warli still keeps its form and omits the description of the marriage ceremony. The Warli artist speaks about his original work as ‘never decoration. It was writing’. That is an advocacy approach, however, there is a true inequality as the model has mastered the form, while the community has to perform its duty.

Key Legal Provisions and Questions

A. Copyright Act of 1957

According to the Act, creators are protected, while ideas and general styles are not covered. Copyright lasts the author’s life plus 60 years or 60 years from publication for the works of unknown authors (items 22, 23 of the Act). The concept of authorship is defined in.

B. The Goods Act of Geographical Indicators (Registration and Protection) of 1999

The section 22(1) of the Goods Act of Geographical Indicators (Registration and Protection) of 1999 identifies two practices: the use of geographical indicators in the name or advertising of goods in a manner which may be misleading to consumers about its origins. It also covers unfair competition, the most pertinent example of which is passing off. The section 22(3) apprehends the terms ‘kind’, ‘style’ and ‘imitation’ when attached to geographical indicators.

C. International Agreements

The WIPO Treaty concluded in May 2024 focuses on genetics and traditional knowledge and is the first treaty with the provisions specific to local populations. The subject of art falls outside the reach of the agreement and is currently debated in the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee. This leads to the question of copyright’s applicability to style. The adequacy of the training of copyrighted works presents the need for licensing as well as whether the gap could be covered by the GI law or international law.

Key Arguments and Legal Analysis

A. A Style Is Not a Work

Copyright protects the intellectual output rather than the method of its treatment. Indian judges search for whether the later work copies the protected output from the earlier one, following the 'substantial-similarity' test laid down in R G Anand v Delux Films. In ANI, the Delhi High Court applied the approach to ChatGPT's output and found no substantial similarity. A Warli-style image that does not reproduce a specific painting will likely also pass the test. The term rule implies both an identifiable author and a date of publication. A wall tradition developed by many people over generations does not fit this definition. Individual living painters may own copyrights for their paintings, but the creative prompts most likely do not reproduce any specific painting. 

C. Training and Fair Use

In ANI, Judge Amit Bansal ruled that storing plaintiff's work for training is a reproduction by default, but it can be considered an exception according to section 52(1)(a)(i). The court dismissed the argument about the automatic exclusion of commercial developers from the exemption and established that there is no evidence of ChatGPT harming the claimant's profits.

There are three warnings to keep in mind. Firstly, the ruling is provisional, and an appellate court may have a different opinion about it; secondly, it pertained to news content only and excluded images; and lastly, the court recognized damages to the plaintiff as important, although the illustrator who lost his commissions due to the use of an image model might present a different argument. 

D. Creator of the Work 

According to section 2(d)(vi), the person who ordered the computer-based job to be done will be considered as the creator. In this case, it is the user who provided the input, not the group of people whose style was copied by the AI. The decision of the Registrar of Copyrights dated August 31, 2026, proves the point that the AI as a creator cannot qualify for the title of author even though it is a human being that instigated the creation of the work, who can act as the author according to law. GI protects products, not images.

Although Section 22(3) seems promising, it works only when notification of the additional protection under section 22(2) has taken place, and there is nothing to prove that Warli painting has received such notification. Furthermore, the article written by the seller takes a practical note about the fact that a GI does not stop studios in other places from making Warli-style works.

Another very important point is that passing off can be invoked only when there is misrepresentation. If a seller is misrepresenting his or her AI product as an authentic piece of work from a community, passing off and section 22 together may provide a solution to the problem. In the same article there are listed many responses of the community, including the 2018 official statement directed to Bata and Coca-Cola advertisement in 2010, but they are all mentioned as complaints and statements rather than as decisions.

F. The International Gap

There have been not any influences on traditional art made by the 2024 WIPO Treaty. The 2026-27 mandate of the Intergovernmental Committee continues stating the draft articles on traditional culture but has no scheduled date for the diplomatic meeting, and the General Assembly has to make a decision If the statement is reasonably true, the image generator has provided the lowest-cost alternative in a market where artists have very little to gain. Furthermore, cultural changes can be observed wherein traditional motifs disappear before the audience, thus leading them to mistakenly assume that nothing has been lost. In addition, an internal change is reflected in the fact that the community has shifted from women to men, with women merely writing the preamble to the chauk, which causes the problem of defining who “the community” is while avoiding the already existing exclusions brought about by commercialization.

At the same time, it can be emphasized that there is an opposing view. Styles need to develop naturally, and Warli painting changed when it was adapted for usage on paper, making it hard to define ownership of a style and freeze a living tradition in its development.

Relevant Case Laws

In the case of R G Anand v Delux Films (1978) 4 SCC 118, the Supreme Court provides an approach to assess the degree of similarity between two works. This determines whether the later artwork is an act of copying or not. However, in this case, a product of Warli style which does not actually copy any particular painting is likely to meet the Supreme Court’s standards.

In ANI Media Pvt Ltd v OpenAI OpCo LLC, CS(COMM) 1028/2024, the court provisionally held that copying is reproduction and it falls under the framework of law. Moreover, there is no significant similarity between the two works. The judgment is about both stages of this case and concerns text.

Practical Implications

The subsequent actions do not necessitate any fresh style of ownership rights or the initiation of a new agreement. To start with, one must keep the communities in the licensing scheme. The fundamental body suggested in the DPIIT paper called CRCAT should include copyright agreement societies and collective management agencies for different types of works and therefore, if there is no society present in the community, it cannot be considered. The DPIIT paper invites responses from different parties in relation to the composition of the body and its share in the amount of royalties deposited to the fund divided among types of art items; this is done so that the volume of any particular type of art does not have to be traced.

Second, in the case of the educational activities related to fair use, there will not be any income from licensing to distribute; in this case, the claim must be presented several times either through the DPIIT project or in one of the principles of creating the work stated in the paper itself. Thus, there is no second part published to date. Third, any work associated with the defined form of tribal art must be marked and not on traditional cultural expressions is the long-term solution but nothing is scheduled before the review of the General Assembly in July 2027.

terms of the concept of community, the current GI applicants and acknowledged Adivasi groups is a good start and it already includes women painters and some form of dispute resolution however, As for tracing the payments, this is not necessary since payment will be by artistic form. As for whether this is a new form of permitting, the answer stays assertive because the core idea here is to provide for payment and attribution.

Conclusion

AI can imitate a tribal art form in much less time than it takes Indian laws to act. Copyrighting a style has no protection and an author is needed, and a GI only protects a good but not a figure. The Delhi High Court has already given its interim opinion in ANI. The process of training may not need a license according to the court, and the government’s proposal is only for the copyright owners. So, this tradition is left without any regulation for the time being. Having a place in a collective organization, a common royalty fund, and a proper labeling scheme would give the tribes the fair treatment without transforming their live tradition into monopoly, and that is what the current process of DPIIT allows doing.

Author: Anushka Jha in case of any queries please contact/write back to us via email to content@khuranaandkhurana.com or at  Khurana & Khurana, Advocates and IP Attorney