Bollywood actor Salman Khan not too long ago joined a rising checklist of celebrities approaching the Delhi Excessive Court docket to guard their “character rights” from unauthorized business exploitation. The 59-year-old actor’s petition highlights a crucial challenge within the digital age: who controls your identification when synthetic intelligence can replicate your face, voice, and even dance strikes?The court docket has directed Fb, Instagram, Google, Amazon and different social media platforms to deal with Khan’s criticism as formal underneath IT Guidelines and act inside three days, signaling the judiciary’s recognition of those rising threats to non-public identification.
From dance steps to deepfakes: What character rights truly cowl
Persona rights, also called publicity rights, grant people unique management over the business use of their identification. This contains apparent components like identify, {photograph}, and voice, however extends far past to embody distinctive attributes that outline a public persona.In Khan’s case, his authorized crew argued that his character rights embody his relationship with followers, signature dance strikes from hits like “Dabangg” and “Mujhse Shaadi Karoge,” dialogue supply model, bodily look, and even nicknames like “Bhaijaan” which have change into synonymous along with his model. The actor claims unauthorized events are utilizing AI, morphing, and deepfakes to create movies and pictures exhibiting false endorsements, promoting merchandise with out permission, and spreading misinformation.The petition particularly targets platforms together with Meta, Google, X (previously Twitter), Telegram, and Amazon, together with unknown defendants engaged in cybersquatting, impersonation, and creating disparaging content material by means of AI manipulation.
Why Bollywood stars are going to court docket in 2025
Khan joins a roster of celebrities who’ve sought comparable safety in latest months. Ajay Devgn, Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, NTR Junior, Kumar Sanu, and even non secular chief Sri Sri Ravi Shankar have all moved Delhi Excessive Court docket for cover towards unauthorized use of their personas.The surge in instances displays an ideal storm: quickly advancing AI know-how that may generate convincing deepfakes, proliferating social media platforms that amplify such content material, and the business worth of movie star identities that makes exploitation worthwhile. Deepfake know-how has made it doable to position celebrities in eventualities they by no means participated in, creating pornographic content material, false endorsements, or deceptive political statements.Khan’s petition underscores one other dimension—he holds registered logos together with “Being Human,” “Being Robust,” and “SK 27,” that means violations aren’t nearly character rights but in addition mental property regulation. His attorneys argued that misuse exposes him to authorized motion underneath promoting requirements that require influencers to conduct due diligence earlier than endorsing merchandise.The Delhi Excessive Court docket has emerged as the first discussion board shaping this jurisprudence in India, granting wide-ranging injunctions that acknowledge celebrities’ unique proper to manage business exploitation of their personas whereas balancing respectable inventive expression, satire, and information reporting.In Khan’s case, the court docket’s three-day directive alerts courts will not tolerate delays when digital content material can unfold virally inside hours. The court docket has scheduled the subsequent listening to for Could 18, 2026. In the meantime, Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora particularly directed platform X to contemplate the mental property rights asserted in Khan’s petition earlier than taking additional motion, indicating courts at the moment are holding social media platforms straight accountable for policing such violations. With AI-generated content material changing into more and more subtle and tougher to detect, authorized specialists predict character rights litigation will solely intensify because the know-how outpaces current legal guidelines.