MUMBAI: Yet another Bollywood personality, Priety Zinta, approached Bombay high court to have her personality rights protected against deep fake Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated images and content.The deepfakes carrying her trademark smile, is depleting her joy, her lawyers contended as they sought an interim order against 16 defendants including known websites and unknown others.Justice Madhav Jamdar on Friday posted the matter to July 6 to pass orders, but first gave time to parties to work out a mechanism or practical protocol to take down the genuinely offending content from websites without disturbing legitimate content.In her suit against Google LLC and others including Meta Platforms Inc, through Bachubhai Munim and Co, the Dil Se star said her heart wants the ongoing infringement of her personality, publicity and moral rights to be stopped.She claimed her right to privacy was being violated as websites based abroad cashed in on her “widely celebrated personality.’’Her suit said domain names also exist in her name which she did not create. It said, “personality traits are an integral/intrinsic part of her personality rights and/or publicity rights, in which the Plaintiff exercises (and ought to exercise) exclusive control. “She is also the co-owner of Punjab Kings, a franchise in the Indian Premier League (IPL). Zinta’s interim plea argued by senior counsel Venkatesh Dhond said the AI generated content was rapidly becoming more realistic with chat-bot style interactions posted and hosted online by alleged infringers.Dhond sought urgent orders so that intermediaries be ordered to take down content she highlighted in the suit and orders to prevent unknown persons, John Doe (collective name for all unknown or unidentified infringers, present and potential) from posting unlawfully.Counsel for Google and Meta did not object to deleting morphed or obscene content but said no blanket orders be issued.Justice Jamdar, observing that protective orders would be warranted on merits also said legitimate content cannot suffer and asked counsel for the parties to confer and work out a protocol to take down genuinely offending content and leave lawful content alive.Her suit said, “numerous AI-generated deepfake videos, memes, manipulated images, Al chatbot personas and other digital content have been created, uploaded, disseminated and made available to the general public on the platforms, like YouTube, X, Instagram and Facebook’’ which utilise her name, image, likeness, voice and other personality traits without the Plaintiff’s authorisation, licence or consent.
