Mumbai: Yet another Bollywood personality, Preity Zinta, approached the Bombay High Court to have her personality rights protected against deepfake Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated images and content. The deepfakes, carrying her trademark smile, “is depleting her joy”, her lawyers contended as they sought an interim order against 16 defendants, including known websites and unknown others.Justice Madhav Jamdar on Friday posted the matter to July 6, to pass orders, but first gave parties times to work out a mechanism or practical protocol to take down the genuinely offending content from websites without disturbing legitimate content.In her suit against Google LLC and others, including Meta Platforms Inc, through Bachubhai Munim and Co, the ‘Dil Se’ star said her heart wants the ongoing infringement of her personality, publicity and moral rights to be stopped. She claimed her right to privacy and “widely celebrated personality’’ were being violated online.Her suit said, “Personality traits are an intrinsic part of her personality rights,’’ over which only she can have “exclusive control. “She is also the co-owner of Punjab Kings, a franchise in the Indian Premier League (IPL). Zinta’s interim plea argued by senior counsel Venkatesh Dhond said the AI-generated content was rapidly becoming more realistic with chat-bot style interactions posted and hosted online by alleged infringers, and sought urgent orders to take take down content.Counsel for Google and Meta did not object to deleting morphed or obscene content but said no blanket order must be issued.Justice Jamdar, observing that protective orders would be warranted on merits, also said legitimate content cannot suffer and asked counsel for the parties to confer and work out a protocol to take down genuinely offending content and leave lawful content alive.
