By Dilip Bobb
The names read like the cast for a blockbuster Hollywood movie. Bollywood actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Amitabh Bachchan and producer and popular television host Karan Johar. Three of them may belong to Bollywood’s leading family, but they also have one thing in common with Johar: they have all approached the courts for protecting their personality rights.
The Delhi High Court’s intervention in Aishwarya’s case shows that judges are recognising the dangers of identity theft in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Justice Tejas Karia’s observations that unauthorised use of an actor’s name, image, or signature can dilute their goodwill was indisputable, but it was equally clear that in the age of AI, the struggle to protect their rights comes up against contemporary reality: that technology is moving much faster than the legal remedies to defend such rights.
In Karan Johar’s case, the Delhi High Court issued an interim injunction protecting his personality rights against the unauthorized use of his name, image, voice, and likeness for commercial purposes. The order specifically prohibits the creation and dissemination of merchandise, videos, and other content using his persona through AI, deepfakes, and other technologies for monetary gain. The problem is that our laws are not adequate enough to deal with AI-enabled deepfakes that are being freely used to sell products and merchandise, with Bollywood personalities appearing to endorse them.
The Johar case was dealt with under Order 39 Rules 1 and 2 of the Civil Procedure Code, 1908. All that the single-judge bench of Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora could do was to direct blocking and disabling of all infringing websites, platforms and social media accounts disseminating content that violate his personality rights. There were 13 parties accused in Johar’s petition, but the damage had been done. By the time he went to court, millions would have already seen his fake endorsements used in multiple and nefarious ways.
The plaintiff contended that Defendant 1, referred to as “John Doe”, as well as Defendants 2 to 13 used AI to create morphed images, including deepfake and audio-video clips that are in bad taste and made the plaintiff a subject of humiliation, disparagement, obscenity and ridicule. He further contended that due to such derogatory and unlawful exploitation of his personality rights, he has suffered a significant loss of goodwill and reputation. Defendant 1 is the owner of the domain name www.karanjohar.com, and it was contended that the adoption of such a domain name was obtained with the intent to ride upon the goodwill and reputation of the plaintiff. Defendant 2 operates a website that allows the public to access and download various images and wallpapers of the plaintiff. Defendant 3 is the registrar of a website that allows the public to swap the voice of the plaintiff using AI. Defendant 4 is the registrar of a website that contains an AI chatbot which unauthorizedly uses the personality rights of the plaintiff. Defendants 5 and 6 are online platforms that make and enable users to make Graphical Interchange Format (GIFs) that inappropriately exploit the plaintiff’s name and image. Defendants 8,9,11,12 and 13 are various online marketplaces and e-commerce websites that have enabled sale of merchandise that unauthorizedly uses the plaintiff’s persona.
Similarly, Abhishek moved the Delhi High Court seeking protection of his personality rights, alleging that rogue websites
were using his name and image without authorization. His plea was filed a day after his wife, Aishwarya approached the Delhi High Court in a similar case. Her plea targeting the website aishwaryaworld.com and other infringers. Aishwarya’s advocate Sandeep Sethi told the Court that aishwaryaworld.com falsely claims to be her “only authorized and official website”, without authorization. Sethi said the platform published personal information, unauthorized images, and was even selling merchandise such as T-shirts priced up to Rs 3,100 and mugs featuring her likeness, creating a misleading impression of endorsement. Sethi called it a “derogatory, defamatory, and a direct assault” on Aishwarya’s dignity.
Meanwhile, her husband, Abhishek, filed an appeal against the website Bollywood Tee Shop, which makes T-shirts of Bollywood celebrities. The petition, filed against the website and other infringers, argued that the unauthorised use of his persona is part of a wider trend of online fraud exploiting celebrities’ identities. A bench led by Justice Tejas Karia posted the matter for January 15, 2026. Johar’s case was also posted for January 2026. The delay means that the judiciary as a whole is still struggling to come to grips with AI-enabled deepfakes using celebrities without their consent.
In November 2022, Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan had filed a petition with the Delhi High Court alleging that individuals were using his name, voice and image without his consent to advertise their products and services, ranging from T-shirts and posters to lotteries and video call applications. In response to his petition, the Delhi High Court ordered the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Department of Telecommunications to take down any links or websites provided in the plea that infringed Bachchan’s publicity rights.
The problem with playing catch-up with emerging technologies is that copyright laws are lacking in teeth and enforcement. Amitabh attempted to obtain a copyright for his well-known voice in 2010 after it was claimed that a tobacco manufacturer used his impersonated voice to advertise its product. The case came under Section 14 of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957, which was compiled well before even computers came into widespread use. Under Section 13 of the Act, all creative works, including books, music, plays, visual arts, sound recordings, and motion pictures, are protected by copyright. That was of no use to Amitabh since under Section 13 of the Act, a celebrity’s voice does not fit into any of these categories and is not specifically covered by copyright protection. Additionally, since voice is not a mark as defined by the Trademarks Act of 1999, it is not possible to register a trademark for it. Further, when a famous person registers a trademark for his or her name, it merely means that they can stop other people from using the trademark with the categories of goods and services for which they have registered the trademark.
Earlier, Bollywood celebrities like Anil Kapoor and Jackie Shroff had also approached the courts to restrain unauthorised use of certain phrases that are iconically related to their personalities. Again, words or phrases used in movies do not come under any established legal right unless they are offensive or likely to create public disorder.
Celebrities are now realising that a single manipulated video or unauthorised endorsement can cause irreparable reputational damage and economic loss. They have also realised that their personality has a direct monetary value in endorsements and branding, and see it as a matter of dignity and intellectual property and commercial control. Back in 2022 when Bachchan senior moved the Court to protect his personality rights, his lawyer had pointed out that not many people had enforced personality rights. That underlines the challenges faced by the judiciary in protecting such rights in India.
There is also some confusion regarding personality rights and the right to privacy. Though related, they protect different aspects of an individual’s identity: personality rights (also known as publicity rights) control the commercial exploitation of one’s persona (name, image, voice, likeness), while the right to privacy protects one’s personal information, dignity, and autonomy from unauthorized public disclosure or intrusion. Personality rights focus on the economic value of a public identity, whereas privacy rights (established in the landmark Supreme Court case Justice KS Puttaswamy vs Union of India, 2017) involved the right to privacy as a fundamental right.
That is the reason for inconsistency in High Court judgements in this regard, such as Super Cassettes vs Union of India, in which the Punjab and Haryana High Court refused to recognize personality rights as a subset of the right to privacy. The courts have consistently failed to distinguish between privacy rights and personality rights. In reality, both need to be considered while deciding upon denial of these rights, especially where advertising in general depends on the use of celebrities to endorse products. AI has made a mockery of this and the courts are struggling to cope with the technological challenge.
The challenge in general was acknowledged by none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi who said, two years ago: “A new crisis is emerging due to deepfakes produced by Artificial Intelligence. We have a big section of the population that does not have the wherewithal to verify their genuineness, and there lies the concern”.
That only underlines the urgent need for new regulatory and legal measures to prevent unauthorised use of an individual’s likeness for commercial gain. India has no direct laws or regulations on AI or deepfakes which is allowing the use of unauthorised celebrity endorsements. AI has created a legal conundrum for anyone to exploit.
The classic example was Olympic shooter Manu Bhaker. After her medal-winning performance in the Paris Olympics, several brands, including Bajaj Foods, LIC and FIITJEE, used her images without her consent in congratulatory posts on social media. These posts were strategically designed to align the brands with her success, thus promoting their products through a marketing technique known as “moment marketing”. This practice capitalizes on trending events or achievements by using a celebrity’s image to gain attention and enhance brand visibility, often without obtaining the necessary consent. In Bhaker’s case, her management company, IOS Sports & Entertainment, issued legal notices to the brands, arguing that the unauthorized use of her image exploited her personality rights.
While these rights are well-established in countries like the United States, Indian jurisprudence surrounding personality rights has developed primarily through case law rather than statutory provisions. With the development of digital platforms and social platforms, where content is rapidly shared and circulated, the boundaries between genuine and indirect marketing have become increasingly blurred. Bhaker’s case, along with the Bachchans and Johar, emphasizes the urgent need for updated laws to safeguard personality rights in an increasingly digitized world.
—The writer is former Senior Managing Editor, India Legal magazine