Actor Akshay Kumar Moves Bombay HC Over Deepfake Videos

Actor Akshay Kumar has reportedly moved the Bombay High Court (HC) to protect his “personality rights” against AI-generated deepfakes. 

As per LiveLaw, the actor sought the HC’s intervention to restrain unknown entities from illegally commercialising his personality rights via synthetic images and videos, misuse of his voice, obscene blogs and other AI-generated content. 

A single-judge bench of Justice Arif Doctor yesterday reportedly heard the submissions from the actor’s counsel and reserved the matter for judgement. 

“These acts cause grave and irreparable harm to the plaintiff’s (Akshay Kumar) goodwill and reputation, dilute his personality/publicity rights, mislead the public, and amount to passing off, unfair competition, and unjust enrichment, thereby necessitating the present action,” argued the actor’s counsel Birendra Saraf.

Saraf also reportedly flagged an “unauthorised” video, which purportedly featured Kumar speaking about Saint Valmiki. He also pointed out another AI-generated video, which showed the actor playing the role of Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister Yogi Adityanath. 

“The objective of these defendants is to unlawfully exploit plaintiffs’ goodwill and reputation for financial gain through advertisements, affiliate links, traffic arbitrage, product sales, phishing promotions, dubious products or schemes, and other monetisation strategies,” Saraf reportedly argued. 

As such, the actor’s lawyer urged the court to restrain unauthorised use of his images, videos, voice and other personality rights. 

Meanwhile, the lawsuit has reportedly sought a decree of permanent and mandatory John Doe injunction against several unknown entities, social media platforms and websites. The suit urges the HC to restrain the continuing infringement and unauthorised commercial exploitation of Kuamr’s personality rights, including his name (Hari Om Bhatia), screen name “Akshay Kumar”, sobriquet “Khiladi Kumar”, image, likeness, voice, mannerisms, and other identifiable attributes. 

“These persons are engaged in creating, publishing, uploading, circulating, and reproducing fabricated and manipulated materials that, inter alia, impersonate the plaintiff, including by way of edited, morphed, and/or manipulated photographs, videos, graphics, counterfeit merchandise listings, and fake endorsements or promotions…,” the plea reportedly added. 

Hrithik Roshan, Kumar Sanu Get Reprieve

In a separate case, the Delhi HC yesterday also reportedly protected the personality and publicity rights of Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan. As per The Hindu businessline, the Court also directed removal of certain objectionable posts against him on social media.

The HC bench, comprising Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora, however, said it was not passing any ex-parte directions for the removal of certain fan pages at the interim stage. The HC listed the matter for next hearing on March 27, 2026, adding that it would pass a detailed interim injunction order later.

The directions came as the Court was hearing a plea filed by Roshan seeking to protect his personality rights and restrain certain online platforms from “illegally” using his name and images.

In yet another case, the Delhi HC reportedly orally said that it would pass an interim injunction order in a plea by Indian playback singer Kumar Sanu, seeking protection of his personality rights. 

As per Bar & Bench, Justice Arora, who was also hearing the plea, also ordered the take down of content that “unauthorisedly” made use of the singer’s persona.

This comes weeks after actors Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan separately sued YouTube to protect their voice and image. The duo have sought INR 4 Cr in damages and a permanent injunction against unauthorised use of their personal likeness. 

Earlier this year, a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed before the Supreme Court (SC) to curb AI-generated deepfake videos of Colonel Sofiya Qureshi. The Apex Court dismissed the plea.

Earlier this year, the Delhi police also filed five FIRs against Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for allegedly posting AI-generated photos and videos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah on the party’s official X handle.