Actor Aishwarya Rai urges Delhi HC to restrain illegal use of name, image

New Delhi, Sep 9 (PTI) 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.

He went on, "Her name and likeness is being used to satisfy someone's sexual desires. This is very unfortunate. " 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.

"This is more egregious when the defendants' activities are aimed at benefitting commercially. In such cases, the plaintiff's identity is used in an unwholesome and unsavory manner which maligns her reputation and exposes her to ridicule, thereby tarnishing her image," it added.

The suit has arrayed as defendants, websites like aishwaryaworld.com, apkpure.com, bollywoodteeshop.com, kashcollectiveco.com which unauthorisedly sells products with name and photograph of the actor.

Further, the plea has arrayed as defendants e-commerce platform Etsy, organisation 'Aishwarya Nation Wealth Motivational Speaker, chatbot with AI characters www.jainatorai.com , YouTube channel @NewNWSTamil, @Bollywood_CinemaTV07, Google LLC, Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Department of Telecommunications. PTI SKV SKV AMK AMK