'Her images are being used to satisfy someone’s sexual desires’: Why Aishwarya Rai approached Delhi HC

Aishwarya Rai moved the Delhi High Court on Tuesdsay over her image, likeness and voice being used in objectionable manner. Here's what happened.

Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai on Tuesday urged the Delhi High Court to restrain online platforms from illegally using her name and images for AI-generated pornographic content. The court hinted that an ad-interim order would be passed to warn defendants from using her name, voice, or likeness without her consent to protect her personality and publicity rights. Further directions will be issued to take down URLs infringing on her rights.

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan arrives for the screening of the film "The History of Sound" at the 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. (AFP)

Why did Aishwarya Rai approach Delhi High Court?

The suit filed by Aishwarya and her lawyers in court is related to misappropriation of her name, image, voice and likeness for commercial gain without her consent. Senior advocate Sandeep Sethi, who appeared in court on behalf of the actor, stated that ‘unreal intimate photographs’ were being circulated online.

“Her name and image are being used to satisfy someone’s sexual desires. This is very unfortunate,” said Sandeep in court. The plea filed by Aishwarya mentioned: “The defendants, including several unidentified parties, are making use of artificial intelligence and deepfake technology by morphing/superimposing the face of the plaintiff to create distasteful videos and images of the plaintiff which are sexually explicit.”

Who is mentioned in the plea?

Aishwarya’s suit has arrayed defendants, websites like aishwaryaworld.com, apkpure.com, bollywoodteeshop.com, kashcollectiveco.com, which unauthorisedly sell products with the name and photograph of the actor.

Further, her plea mentions e-commerce platform Etsy, organisation Aishwarya Nation Wealth Motivational Speaker, chatbot with AI characters, www.jainatorai.com and YouTube channels @NewNWSTamil, @Bollywood_CinemaTV07. It also mentions Google LLC, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Department of Telecommunications.

The high court then posted the matter on 7 November before the court's joint registrar and the court on 15 January 2026, for further proceedings.

Personality rights explained

Aishwarya is fighting for her right to publicity, popularly known as personality rights. It is the right to protect, control, and profit from one’s image, name, or likeness. The actor is now seeking to protect her name, voice, image, unique style of dialogue delivery, and signature. Her plea mentions that it is all the more egregious that her likeness and others are being used in an ‘unwholesome and unsavoury’ manner.

In the past, stars like Jackie Shroff, Anil Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan have also approached the court to protect their personality rights.

With inputs from PTI