Delhi High Court restrains unauthorised exploitation of Ramdev's name, image

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has restrained the unauthorised misappropriation of Yoga guru Ramdev's name, image, voice and other attributes of his personality in all formats and mediums, including content generated through artificial intelligence and deepfake videos.

Protecting Ramdev's personality rights in an interim order, Justice Jyoti Singh said the unauthorised deepfake videos and social media web pages depicting him as endorsing products, cures or medicines prima facie constituted misappropriation and exploitation of his goodwill, which also affected his public image and might tarnish his credibility.

The court, which was dealing with Ramdev's lawsuit on the issue, also directed the removal of certain offending content from the platforms within 72 hours of receipt of the order.

"This Court prima facie finds that the impugned contents are not only violative of plaintiff's rights to protect his image, voice, likeness and other attributes of his persona and personality but go a step further wherein, by use of modern technology such as AI, the images of the plaintiff have been modified and/or associated with people and products he has no connection with," said the court in the order passed on February 18.

"It is directed that till the next date of hearing, defendants No.1 to 10 (including unknown persons).. are restrained from publishing any material which violates plaintiff's publicity/personality rights by utilising and/or in any manner, directly or indirectly, using or exploiting or misappropriating plaintiff's (a) name 'Ramdev', 'Swami Ramde', 'Baba Ramdev', 'Yog Guru Ramdev', 'Yog Guru Swami Ramdev' and/or any abbreviation, moniker, title or variation thereof; (b) voice; (c) image; (d) likeness; (e) unique style of discourse and delivery; and/or (f) any other attributes which are exclusively identifiable/associated with him, for any commercial and/or personal gain, without plaintiff's consent and/or authorisation in all formats and on all mediums, such as but not limited to generated content, deepfake videos, voice-cloned audio, metaverse environments," it ordered.

The court clarified that for content covered by the exception of parody, caricature and lampooning and have not been directed to be taken down, the respective parties would address arguments on the next date of hearing on March 12.

In his lawsuit, Ramdev said he had been subjected to an "unprecedented and alarming onslaught" of AI-generated deepfake videos, manipulated photographs, impersonating social media accounts, distorted caricatures and fabricated endorsements" across multiple platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X as well as e-commerce websites.

He alleged that the activities were not accidental but are orchestrated to misuse and exploit his personality rights.