Delhi High Court is set to pass an order protecting Telugu actor Nagarjuna’s rights after he raised concerns that his personality rights were violated by the unauthorised use of his image in social media content and merchandise.
The Delhi High Court announced its intention to safeguard the personality rights of Telugu actor Akkineni Nagarjuna.
Justice Tejas Karia was addressing a petition from Nagarjuna, which expressed concerns over unauthorized use of his image on social media and in merchandise.
The judge indicated that an order could be issued to remove such content once specific URLs are provided for identification.
Justice Karia remarked,
“The correct way is… you have identified the URLs. They (intermediaries) can be asked to take those links down. You have identified three categories. As of now you have identified 14 URLs,”
Nagarjuna’s representative, advocate Pravin Anand, mentioned that there were additional URLs using the actor’s image without consent, though they were not as severe as those already highlighted.
This led the Court to comment,
“That’s the thing. These personalities have a very long life of fame. How long can these injunctions continue?”
Ultimately, the Court agreed to issue an order to protect Nagarjuna’s personality rights.
Justice Karia confirmed,
“Okay, we will pass an order,”
Nagarjuna’s counsel stressed that the actor’s significant reputation is at stake due to unauthorized content misappropriating his image, including AI-generated materials featuring altered images of him shared on platforms like YouTube.
Advocate Pravin Anand highlighted,
“He (Nagarjuna) has 95 films, two national awards. He is quite a reported person in the Telugu industry. He is called the celluloid scientist because of the versatile nature of his acting style … He has over 6 million followers on Twitter. On Facebook, 8.1 million followers … The first activity we are complaining about is pornographic content about him. The second activity is merchandising. The third activity is AI-generated content. These are YouTube shorts and there are videos. They are paid promotions. They have hashtags, Nagarjuna hashtags.”
Anand raised alarms that the misuse of such content could escalate if morphed images are permitted for training Artificial Intelligence (AI) models.
He stated,
“The worst is that this video content can be used to train AI models according to the YouTube policy. They are actually helping in propagation of the illegal content,”
The Court acknowledged the potential implications, noting,
“That is true for all kinds of generative AI. Once it is part of larger internet, generative AI can use it…. Your argument is that because this is fake, generative AI can further use it … AI is AI, it won’t know what is genuine or not.”
Nagarjuna was represented by Advocates Pravin Anand, Vaishali Mittal, Vibhav Mithal, and Shivang from Anand and Anand.
Nagarjuna’s case follows a series of similar legal actions taken by other celebrities, including Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Amitabh Bachchan, Karan Johar, and Anil Kapoor, where the High Court has typically granted injunctions against unauthorized use of their personality rights.
In several instances, the images, voices, or likenesses of these celebrities were misused for pornographic purposes, prompting the Court to mandate their removal.