The Delhi High Court, on Thursday, protected the personality rights of Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. The court observed that any unauthorised exploitation of personal attributes of an individual not only violates their right to privacy but also undermines the right to live with dignity.
In this regard, Justice Tejas Karia restrained various entities from misusing the personal attributes of the actress, like her name and images – even with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The court stated that such misuse of personality rights also results in harming actress’ reputation.
“Personality Rights of individuals, simply put, entail the right to control and protect the exploitation of one’s image, name, likeness or other attributes of the individuals’ personality, in addition to the commercial gains that can be derived from the same. Personality Rights can be located in the individuals’ autonomy to permit or deny the exploitation of the likeness of other attributes of their personality," the Court said.
“In other words, the unauthorised exploitation of the attributes of an individual’s personality may have two facets – first, violation of their right to protect their personality attributes from being commercially exploited; and second, violation of their right to privacy, which in turn leads to undermining their right to live with dignity," it added.
Justice Karia also expressed that the courts cannot turn a blind-eye to such incidents and further directed Google LLC to take down URLs mentioned in Aishwarya’s suit in the next 72 hours.
Meanwhile, Aishwarya’s husband, actor Abhishek Bachchan also approached the Delhi High Court seeking protection of his publicity and personality rights and requesting that websites and platforms be prohibited from using his image, likeness, persona, or any fake videos, including sexually explicit material. The petition also carries a request for action against websites like Bollywood Tee Shop for selling t-shirts and other merchandise featuring Bollywood celebrities, including Bachchan, without authorisation.
