The Delhi High Court granted interim protection to yoga guru Baba Ramdev’s personality rights, restraining unauthorised use of his name, image, voice, and AI-generated deepfakes. Platforms including Google, Meta, and X must remove infringing URLs within 72 hours.
NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court recently issued an interim order safeguarding Baba Ramdev’s personality rights.
Justice Jyoti Singh barred the unauthorised use of his name, image, voice and other personal attributes on digital platforms, explicitly including AI-generated material and deepfakes.
The court also directed e-commerce and social media intermediaries Google, Meta and X to remove specified URLs that infringe Ramdev’s personality rights within 72 hours.
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Ramdev filed the suit seeking exclusive protection for his voice, image, likeness, distinctive style of speech and delivery, and other identifiable traits. He requested injunctions to prevent unauthorised use of his names and titles such as “Ramdev”, “Swami Ramdev”, “Baba Ramdev”, “Yog Guru Ramdev”, “Yog Guru Swami Ramdev” and any abbreviations, monikers or similar epithets.
The pleading alleges that his name, visage and persona command exceptional goodwill and trust, which various parties have been exploiting through deepfakes, fabricated endorsements and unauthorised commercial tie-ups. It further claims his persona has been repurposed to generate content for entertainment and online engagement.
On February 17, the social media intermediaries argued that Ramdev was using the personality-rights suit to suppress criticism online. Ramdev countered that intermediaries are expected to remain neutral, yet in this instance they were strongly opposing his reliefs.
After hearing the submissions, the court observed that Ramdev is a well-known public figure who has built significant goodwill over decades. Justice Singh noted that unauthorised commercial exploitation of a public figure’s persona especially via AI-manipulated content can constitute misappropriation and passing off. She further found that some digitally fabricated posts carry messages or endorsements in Ramdev’s name, likeness and voice, adversely impacting his public image and potentially undermining the trust placed in him.
The Court added,
“The posts/uploads etc. have the potential to mislead the public into believing that the accounts are the authorised and official accounts of the Plaintiff. It is a plausible contention that some of the infringing content which falsely projects that Plaintiff is endorsing medicines or health-related products and/or giving advice, can be detrimental not only to his reputation but the misinformation can lead to serious and adverse consequences to public interest, if the members of the public were to believe the endorsements or buy the products and/or follow the advice,”
On that basis, the court granted the interim protection for Ramdev’s personality rights.
Senior Advocate Rajiv Nayar, assisted by Rahul S Sahay, Simranjeet Singh, Rishabh Pant, Osheen Verma, Abhijeet Kumar Pandey, Apurbaa Dutta, Raghav Rajmalani, Prabhav Bahuguna, Naman Maheshwari and Pratham Arora, appeared for Ramdev.
Google was represented by Mamta Rani Jha, Rohan Ahuja, Shruttima Ehersa and Ankit Tripathi.
X (formerly Twitter) was represented by Ankit Parashar, Abhishek Kumar, Tejpal Singh Rathore, Tanish Gupta and Sanchli Sethi.
Amazon’s counsel included Akshay Maloo, Vivek Ayyagari and Gynendra Rathore.
Zee Media was represented by Angad Singh Dugal, Govind Singh Grewal and Jagtej Singh Kang.
The Indian Express was represented by advocate Sahil.
Central Government Standing Counsel Satya Ranjan Swain, together with Kautilya Birat, Ankush Kapoor and Vishwadeep, appeared for MEITY and DoT.
Case Title: Baba Ramdev v John Doe(s) and Ors.
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