The Bombay High Court has extended interim protection to Akshay Kumar, marking a crucial moment in India’s ongoing struggle between advancing technology and the right to privacy.
The court highlighted the “serious consequences” of AI-generated impersonations, emphasizing how deepfake content can distort reality, manipulate public perception, and damage reputations within seconds.
For a public figure like Akshay Kumar, whose image is central to his professional and personal identity, unauthorized AI-generated visuals are more than a privacy violation they threaten dignity, credibility, and brand value.
What began as a creative use of artificial intelligence has evolved into a potential weapon for misinformation and defamation. The ability of deepfake tools to mimic faces, voices, and gestures so convincingly has blurred the line between truth and fabrication.
This case could set a wider legal precedent, urging lawmakers to accelerate the formulation of stronger digital rights laws and introduce clear penalties for AI misuse.
While the court’s interim protection offers temporary relief, it also exposes a deeper systemic issue the lack of a comprehensive legal framework to counter identity theft and image manipulation through deepfakes.
Without defined liability norms, robust technical safeguards, and rapid content takedown mechanisms, such threats are bound to rise. The result would be growing mistrust in the authenticity of digital content and increasing risks to personal privacy.
India’s film industry might just be the first sector confronting what could become a nationwide reckoning with AI’s moral and legal limits.
