Delhi High Court To Pass Order Protecting Allu Arjun's Personality Rights Against Unauthorized Use, AI Misuse

The Delhi High Court will be passing an interim order protecting the personality rights of Telugu actor Allu Arjun.

Justice Tushar Rao Gedela will be passing the order against unauthorized use of the actor's personality traits including his name, images, voice etc, without his authorization and consent.

Senior Advocate Swathi Sukumar appearing for the actor took the Court through the impugned material which included the defendants engaging in sale of merchandise using Arjun's image, pornographic and obscene material and AI Chatbot.

Sukumar also referred to an App called “Fake Call Pushpa” which enables an individual to speak to the actor's AI generated likeness. She said that the App can be used by anyone in any scam involving the actor as it uses video calling feature involving his face.

The counsel appearing for Defendant no. 1- Frankly Retail Private Limited, told Court that it is merely an intermediary and that the impugned link has been taken down after receipt of the plaint on April 15.

The Court asked the counsel to file a compliance report within three days.

The suit has also been filed against commercial use of his personality rights in merchandises for commercial gain without his consent.

It may be noted that the Court has been protecting the personality rights of Malayalam actor Mohanlal, spiritual preacher Aniruddhacharya, singer Jubin Nautiyal, Deputy Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Pawan Kalyan, former cricketer Sunil Gavaskar, and actors Kajol Devgan, R Madhavan and NTR Junior. Similar suit has been filed by actor Salman Khan.

The coordinate benches have also passed orders protecting the personality rights of “The Art of Living” foundation founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Telugu actor Nagarjuna, Bollywood actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and film producer Karan Johar.

Notably, the Court also recently protected the personality rights of journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, who had sought relief regarding the circulation of allegedly misleading and AI-generated videos against him on social media.

The Court also passed a john doe order protecting the personality rights of podcaster Raj Shamani, observing that he is a known face in India, especially in the field of content creation.

Title: ALLU ARJUN v. FRANKLY RETAIL PRIVATE LIMITED & ORS