Bombay High Court Orders Takedown of Deepfakes Involving Actor Shruti Haasan
The Bombay High Court on Thursday directed social media platforms to take down objectionable content concerning actor Shruti Haasan. The court acted on allegations of large-scale infringement of her personality and publicity rights through the unauthorised use of her name, image, and likeness in artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes, fake pornography, merchandise, and commercial endorsements.
A single judge bench of Justice Madhav Jamdar observed that Haasan had established a very strong prima facie case for the protection of her personality rights. The bench stated that there was substance in the contention raised by Haasan that the continuous dissemination of AI-generated deepfakes, manipulated images, chatbots, and other infringing material has caused and continues to cause irreparable injury to her goodwill, reputation, and commercial interests.
The court further observed that such harm cannot be adequately compensated by monetary damages alone. Justice Jamdar noted that once deepfake content is disseminated across the internet, it becomes capable of unlimited replication and circulation, resulting in a permanent dilution of the plaintiff's personality rights and public image.
Haasan moved the high court in July through advocates Rashmin Khandekar, Ameet Naik, and Madhu Gadodia. She filed a suit against 18 entities, including Google, Meta, X Corp (formerly Twitter), celebrity booking platforms, and various e-commerce intermediaries over the alleged misappropriation of her personality rights.
According to the petition, the defendants extracted clips from movies and other cinematographic works containing Haasan's performances to create GIFs and deepfake videos without her consent. The plea stated that this was done in a manner that brings disrepute to her, makes her the subject of unsavoury humour and baseless rumours, and violates the moral rights in her performances.
Haasan submitted that the infringement was taking place on a daily basis and that controlling the circulation of such content had become impossible for her. Her plea highlighted an apprehension that unscrupulous individuals could exploit advanced technology to circulate further defamatory and false content using her likeness for illegal gains. Through the suit, Haasan has sought permanent injunctions, the removal of all infringing content, and damages worth ₹15 crore for the loss of reputation, goodwill, and endorsement value.
