Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s Personality Rights Protected By Delhi HC Amid AI Misuse Concerns

The Delhi High Court has restrained misuse of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s name, image, and likeness through AI tools like deepfakes and face morphing, reinforcing personality rights and privacy.

Delhi High Court issues injunction protecting Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s name and image from AI misuse.

Source : Instagram

The Delhi High Court has come to the aid of Bollywood actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, passing a strong order to safeguard her personality rights and clamp down on the unauthorized use of her name, image, and likeness through technologies like Artificial Intelligence and deepfakes.

Justice Tejas Karia, in an ex-parte interim injunction, barred several known and unknown entities (John Does) from misusing Rai’s persona, including her name “Aishwarya Rai Bachchan”, acronym “ARB”, image, likeness, and other identity markers, for commercial or personal gain without her explicit consent.

The court observed that such unauthorised usage was not only impacting Rai’s commercial interests but also her right to privacy and dignity.

‘Personality Rights Linked to Dignity and Privacy’: HC

In a strongly worded observation, Justice Karia noted that personality rights are rooted in an individual’s autonomy over their personal identity.

“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,” the court said, adding that such rights also cover potential commercial gains.

“When the identity of a famous personality is used without their consent or authorization, it may not only lead to commercial detriment to the concerned individual but also impact their right to live with dignity,” the bench noted.

Tech Tools Like AI, Deepfakes Cannot Bypass Consent

Highlighting growing concerns around misuse of new technologies, the court issued specific directions to prevent the use of Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, deepfakes, machine learning, and face morphing to digitally replicate the actress without her permission.

Justice Karia stated, “Courts in such cases of unauthorized exploitation of one's Personality Rights cannot turn a blind-eye and shall protect the aggrieved parties so as to avert any harm to them resulting from the said unauthorized exploitation.”

The court also observed that misuse of celebrity identity without consent can mislead the public into believing that a certain brand or product is endorsed by the celebrity, leading to dilution of goodwill and confusion among consumers.

Google, MeiTY Ordered to Act Swiftly

Google LLC has been directed to remove all identified URLs within 72 hours and submit the basic subscriber information of the accounts and sellers operating them in a sealed or password-protected format. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTY) has also been asked to block these URLs within 7 days.

Justice Karia concluded by acknowledging Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s stature as one of India’s most celebrated actors with widespread public trust and brand endorsements. Any misuse of her identity, he noted, could significantly erode her goodwill.