HC restrains illegal exploitation of Ramdev's name, image

The Delhi High Court has restrained the unauthorised misappropriation of Yoga guru Ramdev's name, image, voice and other attributes of his personality in all formats and mediums, including content generated through artificial intelligence and deepfake videos.

Protecting Ramdev's personality rights in an interim order, Justice Jyoti Singh said the unauthorised deepfake videos and social media web pages depicting him as endorsing products, cures or medicines prima facie constituted misappropriation and exploitation of his goodwill, which also affected his public image and might tarnish his credibility.

The court, which was dealing with Ramdev's lawsuit on the issue, also directed the removal of certain offending content from the platforms within 72 hours of receipt of the order. "This Court prima facie finds that the impugned contents are not only violative of plaintiff's rights to protect his image, voice, likeness and other attributes of his persona and personality but go a step further wherein, by use of modern technology such as AI, the images of the plaintiff have been modified and/or associated with people and products he has no connection with," said the court in the order passed on February 18.