The Delhi High Court on Monday passed an order protecting the personality rights of actor Arjun Kapoor, restraining the unauthorised use of his name, voice, image and the sale of commercial merchandise using his image and likeness.
Justice Tushar Rao Gedela passed an interim injunction, restraining misuse of the actor’s personality traits, including his name, image and likeness, legal news portal Live Law reported.
The court noted that an “overwhelming number of screenshots” submitted in the actor’s lawsuit showed a prima facie violation of his personality and publicity rights, particularly through AI-generated content used for unlawful financial gain.
The court said that if relief was not granted now, Kapoor could face harm that money alone may not be enough to make up for.
“Clearly, those defendants who have employed AI tools to create videos containing sexually explicit and abhorrent content are demonstrably violating the personality/publicity rights of the plaintiff. In fact, such videos are vulgar and clearly would dent the image and the personality rights of the plaintiff, not only beyond measure, but presumably, irreparably too. Such content cannot be permitted to continue to be available on any platforms in any manner whatsoever and are needed to be taken down forthwith,” stated the court in a statement.
“The tabulated depiction of various infringing activities alleged to be carried out by the defendants clearly demonstrates that these defendants are unauthorisedly misappropriating the personality and publicity rights exclusively vested with the plaintiff,” the court further noted.
“It is also clear that such defendants are wilfully indulging in such infringing activities solely for the purposes of unlawful financial gains, and thereby unjustly enriching themselves. Clearly, there is no permission or license granted by the plaintiff to any of the defendants for exploitation of his personality/publicity rights,” the court further stated.
The court has directed Meta Platforms and Google to provide the “Basic Subscriber Information” of certain Facebook or Instagram accounts and YouTube channels accused of violating the law.
Similar suits have been filed by Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan, cricketer Sunil Gavaskar and actors Salman Khan and NTR Junior.
Coordinate benches of the high court have also passed orders protecting the personality rights of The Art of Living foundation founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Telugu actor Nagarjuna, Bollywood actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan, film producer Karan Johar and R.Madhavan.
Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora had recently protected the personality rights of journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, who had sought relief over the circulation of allegedly misleading and AI-generated videos against him on social media.
The judge has also passed a John Doe order protecting the personality rights of podcaster Raj Shamani, observing that he is a known face in India, particularly in the field of content creation.