Delhi HC protects actor Arjun Kapoor’s personality rights

The Delhi High Court granted interim relief to Arjun Kapoor, restraining unauthorised use of his identity and ordering removal of deepfakes and obscene AI content, while directing Meta and Google to disclose details of offending accounts

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has protected the personality rights of actor Arjun Kapoor and restrained the unauthorised use of his name, voice, image and other attributes by third parties for impersonation, sale of merchandise, creating deep fake images and obscene content.

In an interim order passed on April 29, Justice Tushar Rao Gedela directed the removal of the infringing content, saying Kapoor has created an exclusive place for himself in the film world, and his name, voice, image, likeness, photograph, unique persona and signature were liable to be protected from any exploitation.

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The court observed that an “overwhelming number of screenshots” in the actor’s lawsuit revealed a prima facie infringement of his personality/publicity rights, especially through content generated through AI tools, for unlawful financial gain.

It concluded that if relief was denied at this stage, Kapoor would suffer irreparable loss and injury, and the dent to his personality might not be adequately compensated in monetary terms. “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,” the court stated.

“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.

“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,” it opined.

The court directed Meta and Google to disclose the ‘Basic Subscriber Information’ of certain allegedly offending Facebook/Instagram accounts and YouTube channels, respectively. Several public figures, like actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and Salman Khan, Art of

Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, journalist Sudhir Chaudhary and podcaster Raj Shamani had earlier approached the high court seeking protection of their personality and publicity rights. The high court granted them interim relief. Recently, the high court also protected the personality rights of cricketer Gautam Gambhir and actors Sonakshi Sinha, Vivek Oberoi and Allu Arjun by granting interim relief.