Relief to Preity Zinta as Bombay High Court orders takedown of specified deepfakes, AI-generated content

The Bombay High Court today granted Bollywood actor Preity Zinta interim protection over her personality, publicity and moral rights against AI‑generated deepfake and morphed content, ordering the take down of various such posts [Preity Zinta v. Google LLC & Ors]..Justice Madhav Jamdar also emphasised that online intermediaries such as Google, Meta and other social media websites cannot claim to be mere passive conduits in such matters, and that they too are obliged to act against such content. "As an international organization, you must be more concerned with such type of misuse. You must be more concerned that your platform is being misused. You must be more concerned about that. If you start taking action, such type of offenders will stop. And that will enhance your prestige only. Otherwise, you are part of affecting fundamental rights of the citizens of this country," said the judge. .You (social media platforms, online intermediaries) must be more concerned that your platform is being misused.Bombay High Court.The Court was dealing with a plea filed by Zinta against videos, images and chatbot‑style interactions depicting her without permission through AI‑generated deepfakes and morphed visuals. In her suit, Zinta named several intermediaries as respondents, including Google and Meta, as well as domain name registrars and identified infringers. Representing the actress, Senior advocate Venkatesh Dhond referred to a list of about 275 YouTube links that allegedly violate Zinta's personality rights. He added that there were more such online content and sought permission to amend the suit to bring such material on record and widen the scope of relief sought. Justice Jamdar allowed the amendment.The Court proceeded to ordered the takedown of content already flagged by Zinta.In its interim order, the Court recorded that the rights at stake are Zinta’s personality rights and publicity rights. These rights flow from the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) and the right to life, personal liberty and privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution, along with moral rights under the Copyright Act, 1957, the Court noted. The Court further observed that the AI‑generated, morphed and superimposed images and videos mentioned in Zinta’s petition undoubtedly violated her rights and that a case had been made out for granting relief..The Court specified in its order that entities like Meta, Google/YouTube, Tenor and GoDaddy are duty-bound to remove offending content once they receive actual knowledge, and to demonstrate due diligence under Rule 3 of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. Meta’s counsel stated that, as far as the links already identified are concerned, the platform would have “no difficulty” complying with takedown directions. However, future requests involving genuine or lawful material could attract objections, the social media giant said.The judge recorded that in such cases, both sides and other intermediaries have liberty to approach the Court if they face operational difficulties in executing the order.