The Bombay High Court has officially granted Preity Zinta permission to file a civil lawsuit against Google and Meta over the spread of AI-generated deepfakes. Justice Abhay Ahuja cleared the jurisdictional hurdle on June 16, 2026, allowing the actor to pursue legal action against tech platforms headquartered outside Mumbai. This legal escalation happens right in the middle of a widespread global crisis of synthetic media targeting high-profile celebrities without consent.
Zinta’s legal team, led by Advocate Rohan Kadam, argued that the unauthorized distribution of manipulated videos and AI chatbot personas using her likeness actively damages her public image. The suit leans heavily on violations of her personality rights and moral rights under the Indian Copyright Act. The court’s decision to grant special leave is a major procedural victory that sets the stage for a precedent-making showdown over tech platform liability.
This is not an isolated incident for the Indian entertainment industry, which is aggressively drawing a line in the sand regarding digital cloning. Over the past two years, the Bombay High Court has granted similar personality rights injunctions to prominent figures like Kartik Aryan, Akshay Kumar, Shilpa Shetty, and Arijit Singh. Zinta’s move pushes the boundary further by directly targeting the distribution pipelines of the world’s biggest tech platforms rather than just individual anonymous creators.