New Delhi, April 3 The Delhi High Court has protected the personality rights of preacher Aniruddhacharya, also known as 'Pookie' Baba, and restrained the unauthorized use of his name, voice, and image for creating memes, videos, or any other content, including AI or deepfake content.
Justice Tushar Rao Gedela passed the interim order on March 30 in response to a lawsuit filed by Aniruddhacharya.
The court also directed social media entities, Meta, X, and Google, to remove the offending content identified by the plaintiff, which had unlawfully used or imitated his persona.
The court stated that there was prima facie a strong case in favor of the plaintiff, who was a well-known, popular, and well-accepted personality.
The court stated that the nature of the content flagged by him was not "mere parody" and appeared to be disparaging and infringing his personality rights.
It said the apprehension of damage and harm to the image and personality of the plaintiff appeared to be real and present.
Aniruddhacharya alleged that several entities were misappropriating his attributes without authorization, license, or consent, with the ulterior motive of deriving illegal commercial gain and free-riding upon his immense goodwill, commercial value, and reputation.
His counsel submitted that certain deceptive and fabricated content was being circulated to falsely suggest that he endorsed or was associated with fraudulent schemes and spurious goods and services.
Furthermore, the distortion and misrepresentation of his teachings in these posts resulted in a loss of goodwill among his devotees and followers, and also had the potential to further mislead members of the public, the lawyer added.