Delhi High Court Protects Pawan Kalyan’s Personality Rights in AI and Deepfake Case
The Delhi High Court has passed an interim order safeguarding the personality rights of Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister and actor Pawan Kalyan.
Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora restrained several websites and online platforms from unauthorised use of Pawan Kalyan’s name, image, voice, likeness, or any other personal attribute for commercial purposes. The Court observed that such unauthorised exploitation, at a prima facie level, amounts to a violation of personality rights.
The Court clearly stated that no entity can commercially use Pawan Kalyan’s persona through any technology, including artificial intelligence tools such as deepfakes, voice cloning, morphing, or digital editing, without his consent.
Addressing fan pages on social media, the Court took a balanced approach. It directed that fan-run accounts are allowed to continue, provided they clearly mention a disclaimer in their profile stating that the page is a “fan account”. If such a disclaimer is added, no takedown action will be required.
The Court further instructed Meta to inform the concerned users about the interim order and temporarily keep the fan accounts inactive until the disclaimer requirement is complied with. Both Google and Meta have also been directed to provide basic subscriber information of the users involved within three weeks.
Pawan Kalyan had approached the Court alleging that several social media accounts, websites, and e-commerce platforms were misusing his persona for commercial gain. According to him, some entities were using AI-generated voice clips and deepfake content to falsely represent him, while others were selling unauthorised merchandise such as t-shirts, mugs, keychains, stickers, and wallpapers carrying elements of his personality.
Senior Advocate J Sai Deepak appeared for Pawan Kalyan and submitted that despite approaching online intermediaries earlier, the infringing content continued to remain available. In a previous hearing, the Court had already directed Meta, Google, and X to act on complaints related to the violation of Kalyan’s personality rights.
The matter is scheduled to be heard next on May 12.
