The Bombay High Court on Thursday (October 1) while protecting the personality rights of South Indian film actress Samantha Ruth Prabhu, ordered Google, Meta Platforms and other social media platforms and John Doe (unknown parties), to pull down the objectionable and derogatory content uploaded featuring her.

Single-judge Justice Madhav Jamdar noted that Prabhu has pre-dominantly been a South Indian 'mega star' and now has made a remarkable presence in the Bollywood film industry and also the fact that she is a 'Film Fare' awardee.

Advocate Rashmin Khandekar representing Prabhu highlighted several websites, pornographic portals, social media platforms, AI chatbots and even private entities, which have been violating her personality rights by using her photos, deepfake images, videos, morphed images etc in an illegal and an unauthorised manner.

"Plaintiff is a pre-dominantly a star from South Indian Film industry but has graduated to Hindi Bollywood movies... she is a Film Fare awardee... She is a mega star from the South industry... She also an extensive presence in media.. The defendants include the websites using her AI generated morphed obscene photos, videos and even audio clips... Some pornographic websites created her morphed videos and photos with the help of AI... AI can do anything and everything which is being misused by the defendants..." Khandekar submitted.

Hearing the contentions and after considering the material on record, the bench noted that Prabhu's personality and privacy rights flowing from Article 19(1)(a) and Article 21 of the Constitution of India, and also her moral rights protected under the Copyright Act are being violated.

"The plaintiff is one of India's most prominent actors and performers and her career is spanning over 15 years in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi film industries... The material on record shows that plaintiffs personality, privacy and moral are violated by the morphed and deep fake pornographic images... Her personality rights are protected under Article 19(1)(a) and right to life and privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution of India... Her moral rights as a performer are separately protected under the Copyright Act... Thus, all of these rights are violated by the content that she has flagged in the present proceedings. Accordingly, a very strong prima facie case is made out for grant of interim relief," Justice Jamdar observed.

With these observations the bench directed the Google, Facebook and other portals to pull down the controversial and objectionable content featuring Prabhu.

Further, the judge reminded Google of its 'duty' under Rule 3 of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 which clearly casts a duty on such intermediaries to show 'due diligence' to ensure no one is harassed online, or their images or videos are uploaded unauthorisedly etc.

"This pertains to the fundamental rights of the citizens and intermediaries must show due diligence while performing their duties under Rule 3 of the the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021," Justice Jamdar, orally remarked.

The matter will now be heard in due course.