Bombay High Court allows Preity Zinta to sue online platforms for infringement of content produced with AI Mumbai

Alleging violation of her moral rights under the Copyright Act, 1957, actress Preity Zinta filed a plea against Meta and Google for creating, uploading and disseminating AI content on her.

Mumbai: Actress Preity Zinta has filed a plea alleging that various online platforms like Meta and Google created, uploaded and disseminated content on her generated from artificial intelligence (AI), thereby violating her personality rights and copyright and causing huge damage to her reputation.

The actress also alleged violation of her moral rights under the Copyright Act, 1957. A single-judge bench of Justice Abhay Ahuja allowed her plea seeking patent permission, allowing the actress to file an injunction suit.

The Bombay High Court also observed that since the objectionable activities and acts were organised on online platforms and many of the respondent parties had their offices outside Mumbai, some part of the trial was beyond the jurisdiction of the court. Granting the patent permission, the court said it will have the right to hear, examine and dispose of the suit.

In recent years, the advent of AI has led to infringement of personality rights. Several actresses’ personalities have been created by using AI to spread disinformation. Actors including Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Arjun Kapoor, Varun Dhawan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Salman Khan, R. Madhavan, Hrithik Roshan, and Vivek Oberoi have successfully obtained court protection or injunctions enforcing personality/publicity rights.

The earliest and most widely cited landmark victories were by Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Kapoor, and Jackie Shroff, whose cases helped establish and strengthen judicial recognition of celebrity personality rights in India.

Meanwhile, on the professional front, the actress is gearing up for the release of her upcoming film ‘Batwara 1947’. The makers of the film recently unveiled the character posters of the core cast of the drama. The character posters show Shabana Azmi, Sunny Deol, Preity Zinta, Karan Deol, Ali Fazal, and Abhimanyu Singh in a fresh avatar.

Made under the direction of the National Award-winning filmmaker, Rajkumar Santoshi, ‘Batwara 1947’ marks the reunion of Santoshi and Sunny after nearly three decades. These two previously collaborated on ‘Ghayal’, ‘Damini’, and ‘Ghatak’.

Produced by Aamir Khan and Aparna Purohit under the banner of Aamir Khan Productions, the music for the movie has been composed by A. R. Rahman, while the lyrics are penned by Javed Akhtar. ‘Batwara 1947’ is expected to be out on Partition Day, August 14, 2026.