In a significant judgment that stresses on the importance of protecting celebrities from digital exploitation, the Delhi High Court has safeguarded the personality
rights of Bollywood icon Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. The Court ruled that unauthorised use of her personal attributes - including her name, image, likeness, and persona - through technological tools like Artificial Intelligence (AI), deepfakes, and morphing is strictly prohibited. Justice Tejas Karia, presiding over the matter, observed that the unauthorised exploitation of personal attributes of an individual violates right to privacy and undermines the right to live with dignity. The Court added that such misuse not only causes financial detriment to Bachchan but also damages her reputation, dignity, and goodwill. Explaining further, the Court noted, “Personality Rights of individuals, simply put, entail the right to control and protect the exploitation of one's image, name, likeness or other attributes of the individuals' personality, in addition to the commercial gains that can be derived from the same. Personality Rights can be located in the individuals' autonomy to permit or deny the exploitation of the likeness of other attributes of their personality.” It went on to emphasise the two-fold harm caused by misuse: “In other words, the unauthorised exploitation of the attributes of an individual's personality may have two facets - first, violation of their right to protect their personality attributes from being commercially exploited; and second, violation of their right to privacy, which in turn leads to undermining their right to live with dignity.” ALSO READ: Abhishek Bachchan Moves Delhi HC Seeking Protection Of Personality Rights After Wife Aishwarya Rai
Court passes interim injunction in favour of Aishwarya
Accordingly, the Court passed an ex parte ad interim injunction in favour of the actress. Defendants, including unknown entities (John Doe), were restrained from exploiting her name "Aishwarya Rai Bachchan" or acronym "ARB," alongside her likeness and images, for any commercial or personal gain, through the use of any technology including but not limited to Artificial Intelligence, Generative Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deepfakes, Face Morphing, on any medium and format.
The Court further directed Google LLC to take down identified URLs within 72 hours and submit subscriber details of their operators in a sealed cover. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTY) was also asked to block and disable all flagged URLs within seven days.
