Aishwarya Rai Bachchan
New Delhi: Bollywood actor Aishwarya Rai Bachchan on Tuesday urged the Delhi High Court to protect her personality rights and restrain online platforms from illegally using her name, images and AI-generated pornographic content.
Justice Tejas Karia orally hinted that he would pass an ad-interim order cautioning the defendants.
The suit related to misappropriation of various aspects of her personality, including her name, image, likeness, persona and voice, and the defendants are using them for their own commercial gain without obtaining her consent.
The defendants including several unidentified parties are making use of artificial intelligence and deepfake technology by morphing/superimposing the face of plaintiff to create distasteful videos and images of the plaintiff which are sexually explicit the plea said.
Senior advocate Sandeep Sethi, appearing for Rai, said the actor wanted to enforce her publicity and personality rights, pointing out some completely unreal intimate photographs were being circulated online.
There can be no right in their favour to use her images, likeness or persona. A gentleman is collecting money merely by putting my name and face Sethi argued.
Sethi claimed T-shirts and mugs with his client’s pictures were being sold illegally.
Rai was also represented through advocates Pravin Anand, Ameet Naik and Dhruv Anand.
The high court then posted the matter on November 7 before the court’s joint registrar and the court on January 15, 2026, for further proceedings.
The right to publicity, popularly known as personality rights, is the right to protect, control, and profit from one’s image, name, or likeness.
The different aspects of Rai’s personality which she sought to be protected include her name, voice, image, unique style of dialogue delivery and signature.
The plea said misappropriation of any attribute of the plaintiff’s persona without her express permission for a commercial purpose is liable to be restrained on the basis of the traditional conception of publicity rights.
