Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan sue YouTube and Google over AI deepfakes

News Delhi: Bollywood stars Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan have filed lawsuits against YouTube and its parent company, Google, accusing the platforms of hosting AI-generated deepfake videos that misrepresent them. 

The couple is seeking approximately Rs 4 crore in damages and a permanent injunction to halt the dissemination of such content.

The lawsuits, filed in the Delhi High Court on September 6, span over 1,500 pages and include hundreds of links and screenshots to alleged offending videos on YouTube. According to the filings, these deepfakes depict "egregious," "sexually explicit," or "fictitious" content involving the actors, infringing on their personality rights and intellectual property. 

The Bachchans argue that YouTube's policies, which allow users to opt into sharing videos for training rival AI models, exacerbate the issue by potentially multiplying infringing material. 

"Such content being used to train AI models has the potential to multiply the instances of use of any infringing content, i.e. first being uploaded on YouTube, being viewed by the public, and then also being used to train," the lawsuit states.

The case also targets unauthorised sellers of merchandise featuring the couple's likeness, further emphasising their fight against exploitation in the digital age. 

Last month, the Delhi High Court directed Google's legal team to submit written responses ahead of the next hearing scheduled for January 15. Neither YouTube nor Google has publicly commented on the specifics of the case, but similar lawsuits globally have put tech giants under scrutiny for their role in moderating AI-generated content.

This legal action comes amid rising alarms in the entertainment industry about deepfakes, with other celebrities like Rashmika Mandanna and Scarlett Johansson facing similar issues in recent years.