Shreya Gupta
On September 9th 2025, the Delhi High Court granted an interim injunction in favour of actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. The order protected her personality and publicity rights. The Court found that her name, image, and other attributes were being exploited without authorisation.
The Court accepted the actor’s plea that unauthorised actors and websites were using her likeness not only to sell merchandise and create a false impression of endorsement, but also to produce pornographic and morphed images, including material generated or manipulated using artificial-intelligence tools, which, her counsel argued, amounted to fraudulent, deeply invasive misuse.
A bench of Justice Tejas Karia emphasised that personality rights are rooted in an individual’s autonomy. A person has the right to permit or deny commercial exploitation of their image, name, likeness, and related attributes. The Court explained that unlawful use has two harms. First, it causes commercial detriment by misappropriating endorsement value and creating confusion. Second, it infringes privacy and dignity, thereby undermining the person’s right to live with dignity.
Applying those principles, the Court held that the defendants’ conduct risked public confusion, dilution of reputation and goodwill, and a concrete injury to Bachchan’s dignity and moral rights, and therefore could not be permitted to continue. As immediate relief, the Court restrained the named defendants from violating her publicity, personality, and moral/performance rights, and from creating, sharing, or disseminating any content produced through artificial intelligence, generative AI, machine learning, deepfakes, or face-morphing that would dilute or misuse her public persona.
The order also directed an e-commerce platform and Google to take down, disable and block the URLs identified in the petition within 72 hours of notice and to produce basic subscriber information to help identify the anonymous defendants. It asked the Ministry of Electronics & IT and the Department of Telecommunications to issue directions to block and disable the implicated URLs. Finally, the court’s interim order, while specific to this petition, signals a robust judicial willingness to curb AI-assisted misuse of celebrity images and to require platforms and state agencies to act quickly; a separate plea by actor Abhishek Bachchan alleging similar violations remains pending before the court.
Case Title: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan v Aishwaryaworld.com & Ors
Bench: Justice Tejas Karia
Case Number: CS(COMM) 956/2025
Click here to access the order
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