Aishwarya Rai, Abhishek Bachchan sue YouTube over alleged AI videos

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan have filed a lawsuit against YouTube and its parent company Google, seeking Rs 4 crore (approximately $450,000) in damages. The couple's legal move comes after a series of their alleged AI-generated deepfake videos appeared on the platform, following a recent Delhi High Court order aimed at protecting Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan's personality rights. The legal petition, filed on September 6, requests the removal and permanent ban of videos that infringe upon the couple’s intellectual property rights.

While a judge had ordered the takedown of a handful of YouTube links last month which the actors sought, Reuters reported this week that the platform was still showing hundreds of other similar videos, some showing celebrities kissing or their lookalikes romancing through AI manipulation.

One such popular YouTube channel sharing "AI-generated Bollywood love stories" has been removed. It previously had 259 videos, some sexually explicit in nature, that had been viewed 16.5 million times.

YouTube says it removes doctored, misleading content. YouTube said in an email to Reuters the channel flagged in the news agency's report was deleted by the creator and the content is no longer available on the platform.

With around 600 million users, India is YouTube's biggest market globally, and it is popular for entertainment content like Bollywood videos. The most popular video on the now-deleted channel was a video with 4.1 million views showing an AI animation of Salman Khan and Aishwarya in a swimming pool. Khan was in a relationship with Aishwarya long before her marriage.