Delhi High Court orders immediate removal of pornographic content using Naga Chaitanya's identity

Actor Akkineni Naga Chaitanya has secured a significant legal win after the Delhi High Court granted him temporary protection over his personality rights.

The court's order strictly forbids anyone from exploiting Chaitanya’s name, image, voice, or persona without permission, effectively forcing a shutdown of unauthorised online merchandise, fake YouTube videos and explicit morphed content targeting the actor.

Justice Jyoti Singh has given the defendants just 24 hours from receiving the order to scrub the unauthorised content. This all started because the actor decided to draw a line in the sand, filing a lawsuit to protect his personality rights against platforms using his identity for adult content, creepy AI deepfakes, defamatory videos and knock-off merchandise.

Senior Advocate Vaibhav Gaggar led the legal team for Naga Chaitanya, supported by advocates Somdev Tiwari, Akashdeep Gupta, Siddarth C, Abhishek Nair and Vansh Srivastav.

On the other side, Google LLC was represented by a legal team including advocates Mamta Rani Jha, Rohan Ahuja, Shruttima Ehersa and Sanya Sehgal.

After going through the pleadings and evidence, the court found plenty of merit in the actor's request and granted him the immediate protection he asked for. The judge also made it clear that protecting Chaitanya's identity was the fair thing to do, asserting that his reputation would suffer if these digital platforms were allowed to just keep doing what they were doing.

In its ruling, the court acknowledged Chaitanya's persona as a prominent actor with over 15 years in showbiz. The judge said that Chaitanya's personality is a reputed brand that he has managed to build over these years. Because of this, the court made it clear that his personality rights cover everything from his name and face to his voice and restricted any third party from benefitting without his permission.

Drawing on past celebrity cases, the court made it clear that stealing a celebrity's identity doesn't just hurt their wallet but also nose-dives their privacy, dignity and reputation. Justice Singh specifically pointed out that Chaitanya has every right to be protected from explicit videos and creepy AI deepfakes. The court warned that this kind of manipulative content does not just smear an actor's name; it actively tricks regular people into thinking the fake images are real.

The restraint specifically extends to the use of technologies such as artificial intelligence, generative AI, machine learning, deepfakes, AI chatbots and face-morphing tools.