Prominent Tollywood actor Akkineni Nagarjuna has approached the Delhi High Court, seeking protection of his publicity and personality rights. He alleged that some websites and social media platforms are misusing his photos and videos without his permission and requested the court to issue an order prohibiting such use.
Nagarjuna brought to the court’s attention that some people are doing business by obstructing his personal reputation. “As a film actor, my photos and videos that are already online are being morphed through AI and tarnishing my reputation. They are morphing the photos and posting them on social media with obscenities”, he alleged.
He deplored that they are doing business by obstructing these, and also posting videos on YouTube as AI-generated content. All these posts are promotions for payment of money. “They marketed everything with my hashtags,” Nagarjuna explained to the court.
He also expressed his concern that his current reputation in the film industry is being used in a wrong way to tarnish his personality, and that his image is in danger due to unauthorized content. He told the court that his personality is now in danger due to this. In addition, Nagarjuna’s lawyer Anand explained to the court that there are morphed videos and photos on YouTube and other social media that are also created by AI.
Justice Tejas Kariya, who heard this, said that he will issue orders to protect Nagarjuna in this matter. The Delhi High Court judge also commented on this occasion that AI has become a big problem now that it has become a part of the internet.
Meanwhile, many actors from the Bollywood industry including Aishwarya Rai, Abhishek Bachchan, Amitabh Bachchan, Karan Johar, Anil Kapoor have already approached the court on the same issue. Meanwhile, the court, which recently heard Aishwarya’s petition, ordered that her photos cannot be used without her permission.
The court said that the misuse of Aishwarya’s photos has not only caused her financial loss but also damaged her honor and reputation. The Delhi High Court has ordered e-commerce websites and other platforms including Google to remove and block the relevant URLs of the websites that used her photos.
