• Source:JND
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Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan have taken legal action against YouTube and its parent company Google, filing a lawsuit for damages worth Rs 4 crore (around $450,000). The move comes after a series of AI-generated deepfake videos featuring the couple surfaced on the video-sharing platform. Their petition follows a recent Delhi High Court order to protect the personality rights of both Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan, sparking one of the biggest legal challenges in India. The petition, filed on September 6, seeks the removal and permanent ban of videos that infringe upon their intellectual property and personality rights. The Bachchans have also urged the court to stop YouTube from allowing their likeness or videos to be used for training rival AI models. 

According to legal papers reviewed by Reuters, the lawsuit highlights that YouTube has hosted “egregious” and “sexually explicit” AI-generated content. The couple argued that the platform should introduce strict safeguards to ensure their names, voices, or images are not exploited by AI tools. The legal filing specifically mentioned a YouTube channel called AI Bollywood Ishq, which reportedly has more than 259 videos and over 16.5 million views. These videos allegedly use manipulated clips of Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan. One video reportedly shows Aishwarya Rai Bachchan with Salman Khan in a pool, while another depicts Abhishek Bachchan in fabricated situations, such as suddenly kissing an actress or reacting angrily to AI-altered scenes involving his wife.

Meanwhile, in their petition, the couple emphasised the wider dangers of such videos being used in AI model training. They stated, “Such content being used to train AI models has the potential to multiply the instances of use of any infringing content i.e. first being uploaded on YouTube being viewed by the public, and then also being used to train.” The lawsuit also questioned YouTube’s current policy, which allows creators to consent to their videos being used for AI training. The Bachchans believe this policy is highly unsafe. They argued, “Allowing creators to consent to their videos being used to train AI models is dangerous, because content that misrepresents them could eventually be multiplied by AI itself.” Additionally, the actors have warned that without stricter regulations, deepfakes could cause repeated damage to individuals and their families. As they noted in their filing, “Such content being used to train AI models has the potential to multiply the instances of infringing use – first being uploaded on YouTube and viewed by the public, and then also being exploited for AI training.”

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On the other hand, India currently does not have specific laws protecting “personality rights” in the way some US states do. However, in recent years, a few Bollywood stars have started legal battles to assert these rights in Indian courts. The Bachchans’ petition is among the most high-profile cases so far, combining issues of AI-generated content, celebrity privacy, and intellectual property rights.