Bombay High Court orders takedown of Ananya Panday AI chatbots

The Bombay High Court on November 5 passed an ad-interim order restraining the unauthorized use of actor Ananya Panday's name, image, likeness, voice and signature, including AI chatbots built to impersonate her and sexually explicit deepfakes.

Justice Madhav Jamdar passed the ex-parte order in a suit styled Ananya Panday v. Fankaar Live Experiences Pvt. Ltd. & Ors., according to Bar and Bench. LiveLaw reported the order the same day and said the court found prima facie that the flagged content violates Panday's right to privacy, her right to publicity, her moral rights and her right to live with dignity. LiveLaw's report carried a "will be updated" note at the time of writing.

Panday's plea flagged the unauthorized sale of merchandise carrying her name and image, talent agencies falsely claiming authority to arrange her professional bookings, and the circulation of deepfakes. It also raised AI-enabled chatbots that the filing said were impersonating her, and sexually explicit deepfake content on platforms including Meta, X Corp and Reddit, per Bar and Bench.

Justice Jamdar restrained the defendants from exploiting Panday's personality attributes or passing off goods and services as endorsed by her. The court directed Amazon and Flipkart to remove unauthorized product listings, ordered social media intermediaries to take down the offensive deepfakes and other objectionable content, and instructed domain registrars and government authorities to block websites hosting the fake chatbots and illicit content. It also ordered the immediate destruction of unauthorized physical merchandise.

India Today reported that the filing invoked performer's rights under Sections 38, 38A and 38B of the Copyright Act, 1957, in relation to Panday's onscreen performances, and listed unauthorized cosmetic surgery claims and false commercial endorsements among the alleged acts.

In a separate order the same day, LiveLaw reported, Justice Jamdar directed all respondents in a personality-rights suit brought by TV actor Rupali Ganguly to pull down objectionable content against her. Huts and Looms Pvt. Ltd. was the one respondent excepted, after it told the court it had used only images Ganguly shared through her stylist.

Justice Jamdar has issued several of these orders. On October 1, he restrained the unauthorized use of actor Samantha Ruth Prabhu's name, image and voice and ordered takedowns of AI-generated deepfakes and morphed content built from her identity, in an order covering 18 defendants, per SLOP TV's earlier coverage. That suit names Meta, Google and Amazon among the parties and lists the next hearing for December 10. The reasoning runs the same way across the orders: personality and publicity rights are protected under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, which covers freedom of speech and expression, and Article 21, which covers life, personal liberty, privacy and dignity, while a performer's moral rights sit under Section 38B of the Copyright Act.

MediaNama wrote that it had not seen the order and listed what the reports leave open: which websites, chatbots and listings the order covers, which government authorities it addresses, and when the Panday matter returns to court. The reports also do not say whether the order distinguishes commercial exploitation and sexually explicit content from parody, commentary or fan work.

For creators, the injunctions restrain circulation of content built from one person's likeness and voice. No model or generator is named as the cause, and none of these orders decides anything about the technology itself. A creator who builds or resells a likeness feature could face the same takedown notices a platform has to act on, and the Samantha suit named 18 defendants, including the platforms a clip would be uploaded to.

The ad-interim order remains in force pending further orders; the reports do not state when the Panday suit returns to court.