High Court rules in favour of actor Vivek Oberoi in lawsuit about his likeness being used to generate deepfakes, sell t-shirts
Vivek Oberoi. File pic
Protecting the “personality rights” of actor and entrepreneur Vivek Oberoi, the Delhi High Court has restrained several entities from misusing his name, voice, and image for commercial or personal gain.
Oberoi filed a suit in the Delhi High Court on February 4, 2026, to protect his personality and publicity rights. The lawsuit seeks to prevent the unauthorised use of his name, image, voice, and likeness in AI-generated, deepfake, which was causing “incalculable loss to his goodwill and reputation”.
In an interim order, Justice Tushar Rao Gedela held Oberoi has a “copyright” over his own personality, which includes his image, likeness, voice, name and signature, and his long standing career and stellar success in films clearly demonstrate his goodwill, reputation and acceptability, observed the court.
The court therefore restrained several entities from violating Oberoi’s “personality/publicity rights” by misusing his name “Vivek Oberoi”, voice, image or other aspects of his persona for any commercial or personal gain through the use of any technology including AI, deep fakes, or face morphing. It also restrained the creation and sharing of any products, like t-shirts and posters, bearing his personality’s attributes.
The court directed the online platforms, including YouTube, Meta Platforms and X Corp, to take down the links of all offending articles within 72 hours. “These videos are vulgar and sexually explicit in nature. What is particularly egregious is the fact that the defendants are exploiting the plaintiff’s image and creating such YouTube Shorts/videos to gain traction for their videos,” it stated.
Several public figures, like actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, her husband Abhishek Bachchan, Salman Khan, “Art of Living” founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, and podcaster Raj Shamani had earlier approached the high court seeking protection of their personality and publicity rights. The court granted them interim relief.
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