Delhi High Court orders Meta to remove AI deepfakes

The Delhi High Court ordered Meta to remove, disable access to and permanently take down AI-generated deepfake content depicting Kangana Ranaut, a Bollywood actor and a sitting member of India's lower house of parliament for the Bharatiya Janata Party, within 72 hours of being served the interim order, according to the interim order, passed October 8 by Justice Vikas Mahajan of the Delhi High Court.

The same order restrains the defendants, including unidentified parties the court calls John Does, from creating, publishing, hosting or disseminating any AI-generated content, deepfake, synthetic media, manipulated video or audio, fabricated speech, false endorsement or impersonation content depicting or purporting to depict Ranaut. It also bars them from operating accounts, pages, profiles, channels or websites that falsely suggest an association with or endorsement by her.

The court directed the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Department of Telecommunications to issue directions to internet and telecom service providers to block access to the identified infringing websites, according to the order. The order sets the same 72-hour window for that direction, with a compliance affidavit from each party due within two weeks, though PTI and India Today both described the website-blocking deadline as two weeks. Ranaut may notify additional infringing URLs, accounts and channels discovered later, and the defendants must remove or disable them without her filing a fresh lawsuit, a mechanism known as a dynamic injunction.

Ranaut's counsel objected to sexual and pornographic content, fake news and AI-generated content that wrongly attributed statements to her, PTI reported. The court noted that some content identified in her filings appeared at first glance to be obscene, sexually vulgar or pornographic material generated through AI or manipulation and depicting her without permission. Her lawyer also flagged objectionable satirical content, including memes, but said no interim relief was being pressed on that at this stage, India Today reported.

The court held that Ranaut's stature gives her proprietary rights over her personality and associated attributes, including the exclusive right to use them for commercial purposes and to protect them against unauthorized exploitation. "This further includes protection to the plaintiff against such instances of the impugned content, involving AI-generated/morphed, sexual, and explicit deepfakes," the order states. It cited Rule 3(1)(b)(ii) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021, which obliges an intermediary not to host or transmit obscene or pornographic material. The court said the apprehension of damage to her image and personality appeared, prima facie, to be real and present.

The defendants have liberty to approach Ranaut for clarification on how specific URLs fall under the order. Any platform that is not primarily an infringing website and is blocked anyway may ask the court to modify the injunction by undertaking that it does not intend to infringe her personality rights. Bar & Bench identified the case as Kangana Ranaut v. Meta Platforms Inc and Others.

The order is the latest in a run of personality-rights actions by Indian public figures. The court has previously granted interim relief in matters moved by actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and Salman Khan, Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, podcaster Raj Shamani, Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan and cricketer Abhishek Sharma, according to PTI.

For creators who build videos, avatars or voice clones from a recognizable person's likeness, the order signals a widening front. An interim injunction is a holding measure based on a prima facie view, not a final ruling on the merits, and it binds only the parties named or described in the order. But the court's reasoning, that a well-known person holds enforceable rights over their name, face, voice and persona, is the same logic Indian courts have applied in earlier deepfake and likeness cases. Makers of AI video working with public figures in India face narrower tolerance for unauthorized likeness use. The practical reading is that consent, a license or a clear parody or commentary basis matters, and the safer course is to document that basis before publishing.

Compliance affidavits from Meta, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Department of Telecommunications are due within two weeks of the October 8 order, which holds until the next hearing on February 3, 2027.