The Delhi High Court has granted interim relief to actor Kajol, safeguarding her personality and publicity rights. In an order dated February 20, Justice Jyoti Singh restrained several entities from using Kajol’s name, image, voice, likeness, or any distinctive elements of her persona without prior authorisation.The actor had instituted a commercial suit against multiple parties, including e-commerce portals, social media handles and artificial intelligence-based platforms. Among those named were Kash Collective, Pinkswag, Nazrrco, Amazon, Meta Platforms Inc., YouTube, SpicyChat.ai and Talkie-ai.com, among others.
Kajol alleged that the defendants were marketing merchandise featuring her name and photographs, generating AI-based content and chatbots that replicated her persona, and hosting morphed as well as pornographic material linked to her identity.The Court noted that Kajol holds trademark registrations for the mark “KAJOL” and has asserted her personality and publicity rights, along with statutory trademark protections and common law rights against passing off.Upon reviewing the material presented, the Court found that a prima facie case had been established and that failure to grant temporary protection would cause irreparable harm to the actor.“Plaintiff (Kajol) is entitled to protection against dissemination of morphed and pornographic content as well as AI generated images portraying her in inappropriate clothing, false settings and inappropriate scenarios with other celebrities in the film industry. Such a distasteful content is harming and damaging the reputation of the Plaintiff and may mislead the public into believing what is depicted may be true,” observed the Court.The interim order bars the defendants from using or exploiting Kajol’s name in any form, including “Kajol”, “Kajol Mukherjee”, “Kajol Devgan” and “Kajol Mukherjee Devgan”. It further restrains the unauthorised use of her image, voice and likeness for commercial or personal benefit, whether through artificial intelligence tools, deepfake technology or AI-driven chatbots.Specific directions were also issued to Kash Collective, Pinkswag, Nazrrco and Amazon to cease the sale and remove from their platforms any merchandise bearing her name or image.Additionally, social media intermediaries and websites have been instructed to take down the content identified in the order within 72 hours and furnish details of the accounts responsible. The Court has also directed the Department of Telecommunications and the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to block and disable the specified websites within 72 hours of receiving the directive.The matter is scheduled for further hearing on April 23, 2026. Earlier, the court has protected the personality rights of many other celebrities like Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, R Madhavan, Kumar Sanu, Nagarjuna among others.
