New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has ordered actor and entrepreneur Vivek Oberoi to protect his personality rights, restraining entities from using his name, image and identity without his consent.
Vivek Oberoi alleged that he impersonated her on social media by creating fake accounts using her name and picture, selling unauthorized merchandise and creating and promoting AI-generated content.A bench of Justice Tushar Rao Gedela on Thursday took up the case seeking protection of Oberoi’s personality rights and said, “Yes, we will order.”
Oberoi accused him of impersonating him on social media by creating fake accounts using his name and image, selling unauthorized merchandise and creating and promoting artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content.
The court observed that Oberoi is a successful entrepreneur and humanitarian as well as an accomplished and well-established actor.
In its order released later, the court said that he retains rights over his personality traits, including his image, likeness, voice, name and signature, which are uniquely and exclusively associated with him, and thus directed various organizations to remove the infringing content within 72 hours.
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“In the first place, all the features mentioned above, including his voice, etc., are exclusively recognizable to the plaintiff by the general public and those in the entertainment industry. Therefore, the plaintiff, at this stage, the plaintiff has the right to protect his personality in addition to all his qualities from unauthorized access, as some of the infringers,” the bench said.
Oberoi’s lawsuit alleges AI and deepfake technology is being used to morph and superimpose his face to create offensive images. It added that some objectionable content is offensive, inappropriate and defamatory, and has the potential to commercially exploit its identity and reduce its market value.
“Just as a plaintiff [Oberoi] has control over the commercial use of his personality, name, image, likeness and other characteristics that are individually identifiable and related to the plaintiff, no one may use and/or abuse and/or imitate and/or commercially exploit any aspect of the plaintiff’s personality,” without the consent of the state and the consent of the litigant.
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This year, the court upheld senior advocate Vikas Pahwa’s personality rights. Last year, it protected the personality and publicity rights of filmmaker Karan Johar and actors Akkineni Nagarjuna, Salman Khan, Ajay Devgn, Hrithik Roshan, Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.
