The Delhi High Court has granted Hrithik Roshan legal protection against AI-generated deepfakes and misuse of his image, voice, and likeness, a landmark order safeguarding celebrity personality rights in the digital and AI era.
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NEW DELHI: In a major step toward safeguarding celebrity personality rights in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Delhi High Court has granted interim protection to Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan.
In an order passed on October 15, 2025, restrained unidentified defendants (John Does) from using Roshan’s name, likeness, image, voice, personality, or any other aspect of his persona to create merchandise or misuse through AI, deepfakes, machine learning, face morphing, or GIFs for commercial purposes.
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Court’s Observations
The Court noted that the actor’s attributes are protectable elements of his personality rights and can be defended against impersonation, false, obscene, morphed, or distorted content.
“Prima facie the Plaintiff’s personality traits and/or parts thereof, including Plaintiff’s name Hrithik Roshan, voice, image, photograph, or likeness and other attributes are protectable elements of the Plaintiff’s personality rights. The Plaintiff is also entitled to protect itself against impersonation, false, obscene, morphed and distorted content created with the use of AI or otherwise, which is demeaning and lowers his reputation and goodwill,”
the Court said.
The Court referred to similar rulings in cases concerning Anil Kapoor, Karan Johar, and Jackie Shroff, reiterating that unauthorised exploitation of celebrity personality rights for commercial gain can be protected through injunctions.
The interim order will remain in force until March 27, 2026, when the matter will next be heard.
Hrithik Roshan’s Allegations
Roshan approached the Court alleging that his personality rights were being misused for commercial gain by creating vulgar and obscene content using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
He filed a suit against various websites, sellers, and unknown entities, accusing them of:
- Creating morphed images, memes, and AI-generated vulgar content,
- Selling unauthorised merchandise, exploiting his image, voice, and likeness, and
- Deceiving fans for illegal profits.
Additionally, the actor sued Markmonitor.Inc., claiming the company had wrongly portrayed him as its founder, thereby misleading the public.
Roshan argued that these acts amounted to violations under the Copyright Act, 1957, the Trade Marks Act, 1999, and infringed his right to privacy, goodwill, and reputation.
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Court’s Stand
While granting protection against AI misuse and commercial exploitation, the Court declined to take down Hrithik Roshan’s fan pages at this stage.
Justice Arora observed that fan pages do not amount to commercial use or defamation, emphasizing that social media platforms like Instagram are not used solely for monetization.
“I cannot take down fan page at this stage. We will decide on their rights. We will ask for BSI details. Instagram is not only for commercialisation, people use it for fun. This is not defamatory,”
the judge said.
The Court clarified that using a celebrity’s photograph or creating non-commercial fan content does not, by itself, constitute a violation.
“This fan page does not appear to be commercial use. People on WhatsApp use photos of celebrities. He is not making a commercial use. If a fan has used his creativity to create the post, we will hear him first. Ex parte injunction I will not grant,”
Justice Arora added.
During the hearing, Senior Advocate Sandeep Sethi, appearing for Roshan, pointed out that a dance tutorial club was using one of the actor’s songs and dance steps. The Court, however, stated that this also did not amount to commercial use:
“They are not using your name. It is a famous song of Hrithik Roshan which is being used as a demo and they will be teaching it. This is not commercial merchandise. They are using your performance to teach people. At this stage, I am not persuaded,”
the Court said.
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Advocate Varun Pathak, representing Meta, submitted that the removal of entire fan pages or profiles could be disproportionate, and that only specific URLs found to be infringing could be taken down.
Agreeing with this approach, the Court directed Google and Meta to provide Basic Subscriber Information (BSI) of the creators of the fan pages.
Roshan was also directed to implead these fan page creators as parties to the case, ensuring they are heard before any further directions are issued against them.
Additionally, e-commerce websites and Domain Name Registrants (DNRs) were directed to submit BSI details of users allegedly involved in selling infringing merchandise within three weeks.
Appearance:
For Roshan: Senior Advocate Sandeep Sethi with advocates Nizam Pasha, Parag Khandhar, Chandrima Mitra, Krishan Kumar, Tapan Radkar, Pratyusha Dhoddha, Sidharth Kaushik and Shreya Sethi
For Meta: Advocates Varun Pathak, Varsha Jhavar and Sana Banyal
For Google: Advocate Aditya Gupta
For Telegram: Advocate Anushka Sarda
For Ebay Inc.: Advocates Nitin Sharma and Angad S Makkar
For Amazon: Advocates Vivek Ayyagari, Srishti Dhoundiyal and Manas Raghuvanshi
Case Title:
Hrithik Roshan vs Ashok Kumar/John Doe & Ors
CS(COMM) 1107/2025 & I.A. 25665-25667/2025
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