The Delhi High Court has granted interim protection to actor and Member of Parliament Ravi Kishan in a suit alleging large-scale misuse of his personality rights, restraining several individuals and online platforms from using his name, image, likeness, voice and other identifiable attributes without authorisation, including through artificial intelligence and deepfake technology.
Justice Jyoti Singh observed that Ravi Kishan had made out a prima facie case for the grant of interim relief and held that the balance of convenience lay in his favour.
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“Plaintiff has made out a prima facie case for grant of ex parte ad interim injunction. Balance of convenience lies in favour of the Plaintiff and he is likely to suffer irreparable harm in case interim injunction is not granted.”
According to the plaint, the defendants had allegedly uploaded AI-generated videos, vulgar reels, fabricated political content, sexually explicit material and pornographic webpages using Ravi Kishan’s name, image and persona. The suit also alleged that several websites used the actor’s name as a keyword and as part of URLs to attract users to explicit content, thereby tarnishing his reputation. It further challenged the unauthorised use of his name and likeness in a radio programme titled What is Love with Kavi Kishan.
The Court noted Ravi Kishan’s long career spanning over three decades in cinema and public life, observing that he had built substantial goodwill through his work as an actor and parliamentarian. It recorded that he had acted in over 750 films across multiple languages and had acquired enforceable personality and publicity rights over his name, image, voice, likeness, signature, catchphrases and other distinctive characteristics. Recognising the legal protection available to such rights, the Court observed:
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“Personality rights are now judicially recognized as also the need to protect them.”
The Court referred to its earlier decisions in Jaikishan Kakubhai Saraf alias Jackie Shroff v. Peppy Store & Ors., 2024 SCC OnLine Del 3664 and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan v. Aishwaryaworld.com & Ors., 2025 SCC OnLine Del 5943, where it was held that unauthorised use of a celebrity’s personality attributes causes not only commercial detriment but also infringes the individual’s rights to privacy, personality and dignity.
The Court observed that Ravi Kishan was entitled to seek action against content that violated his personality rights or was vulgar, obscene, sexually explicit or pornographic and damaged his reputation.
Accordingly, the Court restrained the defendants, including unidentified “John Doe” parties, from directly or indirectly exploiting Ravi Kishan’s personality rights by using his name “Ravindra Shukla” or “Ravi Kishan”, his image, likeness or any other identifiable aspects of his persona for commercial or personal gain through any technology, including Artificial Intelligence, Generative Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and deepfakes, across physical, virtual and social media platforms.
The Court also specifically restrained the defendants from posting any vulgar, obscene or pornographic audio-visual content using Ravi Kishan’s personality attributes. It directed the concerned defendants and domain name registrars to take down the URLs identified in Annexure A within three days. In case of non-compliance, Meta Platforms, Google LLC and X Corp. were directed to initiate takedown action within 72 hours upon being notified by the plaintiff.
The suit has been registered, notices have been issued to the defendants, and the matter will next be taken up on October 16, 2026.