No AI Deepfakes, fake ads: Court protects Aishwarya Rai's personality rights - All you need to know

New Delhi: In a big relief to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, the Delhi High Court on Thursday (September 11) protected the personality rights of the actress. Earlier, the Ponniyin Selvan actress filed a plea seeking protection against unauthorised use of her name and image by rogue websites.

The interim protection will remain in place until the next hearing on January 15, 2026, and restrains the infringers from violating Aishwarya’s personality, image, moral rights, and from passing off their goods and services as endorsed by her, even with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The court also noted that such misuse of personality rights could harm the actress’s reputation.

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The court further barred the creation or sharing of products, including t-shirts, mugs, and posters, and content such as images, images, and audio visuals using technologies like deepfakes, AI, or face morphing. The court also directed e-commerce sites and Google to remove infringing URLs within 72 hours.

Additionally, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the department of Technology have also been instructed to issue directions to block and disable the URLs.

The court also observed, “Any infringement of the Plaintiff’s Personality Rights, while causing confusion among the public regarding endorsement or sponsorship of a product or service by the Plaintiff, will also lead to dilution of her reputation and goodwill. 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 further added, “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.”

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Meanwhile, Aishwarya Rai’s husband Abhishek Bachchan has also moved the Delhi High Court seeking protection of his publicity and personality rights. He further requested the court to prohibit websites and other platforms from using his images and fake videos, including sexually explicit material.