NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Wednesday passed an interim order protecting the personality rights of actor Anil Kapoor while restraining the misuse of his name, image, voice, and other attributes of persona, including the ‘jhakaas’ catchphrase for commercial gain on the Internet in an illegal manner.
A single-judge bench of Justice Prathiba Singh noted that a celebrity’s right of endorsement could in fact be a major source of his livelihood, saying any form of misuse or commercial use of a celebrity’s name, voice, persona, or likeness has been shunned by the Supreme Court.
The court also barred “other unknown persons” from disseminating various videos, and links, while directing internet service providers to remove them immediately. “Defendants are restrained from any manner utilising Anil Kapoor’s name, likeness, image, voice or any other aspect of his persona to create any merchandise, ringtones or any other manner by using technological tools like AI, machine learning, deep fakes and face morphing in a manner either for monetary gain or otherwise.
They can’t create any videos or photos etc, for commercial purposes in violation of the plaintiff’s rights,” the court ordered. Advocate Pravin Anand, appearing for the actor, pointed out the misuse of Artificial Intelligence (AI) like technology tarnishing his client’s image. “I am able to show these people are making money,” he said.
MEITY told to act
The HC directed the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to take steps to block the pornographic videos uploaded using morphed images of the actor.