MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court on Thursday directed social media platforms to take down objectionable content concerning actor Shruti Haasan for alleged large-scale infringement of her personality and publicity rights via unauthorised use of her name, image and likeliness in AI-generated deepfakes, fake pornography, merchandise, and commercial endorsements.
Haasan has sought permanent injunctions, takedown of infringing content, and damages worth ₹ 15 crore on account of the loss of reputation, goodwill and endorsement value. The bench further observed that “such injury cannot be adequately compensated by monetary damages alone, as once deepfake content is disseminated across the internet, it is capable of unlimited replication and circulation, resulting in permanent dilution of the plaintiff’s personality rights and public image.
A single judge bench of Justice Madhav Jamdar observed that Haasan had made out a “very strong prima facie” case for protection of her personality rights. “There is substance in the contention raised by the plaintiff (Haasan) that the continuing dissemination of Al-generated deepfakes, manipulated images, chatbots, and other infringing content has caused and continues to cause irreparable injury to the plaintiff’s goodwill, reputation, and commercial interests,” the court said. “The defendants are extracting clips of movies or other cinematographic works which contain performances of the plaintiff (Hassan), for creating Graphic Interchange Formats (GIFs), deep fake videos etc., without her consent…This is done in a manner which brings disrepute to the plaintiff and makes her the subject of unsavoury humour, disrepute and baseless rumours, violating her moral rights in her performances,” the petition said. Haasan said that the infringement of her personality rights was occurring every day and the circulation of such content had become impossible for her to control. “Given the mischievous use of advanced technology by some of the parties involved, the plaintiff apprehends that more unscrupulous individuals may also soon infringe her personality rights by circulating defamatory, infringing and false content by using her image, name and likeness in order to make illegal gains,” the petition noted.
