Sonakshi Sinha v. Character Technologies Inc. & Ors.

Sonakshi Sinha, a Hindi film actor, filed a commercial suit in the Delhi High Court in March 2026, registered as CS(COMM) 275/2026. It was the latest in the line of personality-rights suits by film personalities, following the orders for Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff and the Bachchan family. Unlike most of those suits, it named two companion-chatbot platforms as its first two defendants.¹

Companion chatbots allow users to create or chat with characters that imitate real or fictional people. The plaintiff said that Character.AI, operated by Defendant 1, Character Technologies Inc (a Delaware company), lets users create chatbots that present as real personalities and which may carry a person's likeness or voice. The order also records a "Character.AI voices" feature that lets users upload audio clips to create speech-producing chatbots. She alleged that chatbots on character.ai and on janitorai.com, operated by Defendant 2 (also a Delaware company), presented as her, let users interact with them as though with her, and generated obscene or objectionable outputs, and that some AI-generated images showed her in inappropriate clothing. The plaintiff submitted that Defendant 1 had received significant venture capital and was monetising the allegedly infringing use.¹

The plaint named 23 defendants. Defendants 1 and 2 are the chatbot platforms. Defendant 3 is the usual John Doe ("Ashok Kumar") group. Defendants 4 to 17 are apparel, jewellery and fashion businesses running websites or social-media pages, such as erastories.in, preevin.com, blacky.in and naariclothing.in, which are accused of selling merchandise using her persona. Defendants 18 to 21 are domain-name registrars, among them GoDaddy.com LLC (Defendant 18) and Endurance Digital Domain Technology Private Limited (Defendant 19), impleaded for compliance and for disclosing details of the websites. Defendants 22 and 23 are the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Department of Telecommunications, impleaded to secure compliance and to direct internet service providers and intermediaries to take down content if required.¹

Justice Jyoti Singh heard the application (I.A. 7287/2026) ex parte and granted the injunction on 20 March 2026. In the order's words the plaintiff had made out a prima facie case and the balance of convenience lay in her favour. The court held that Defendants 1 to 17 appeared to be unlawfully exploiting her persona for commercial gain without her consent, and that some were hosting "images of the Plaintiff with inappropriate clothing and obscene content using AI tools". Citing Anil Kapoor v. Simply Life India, it noted that "a celebrity's right of endorsement acts as a major source of livelihood". It also relied on Jaikishan Kakubhai Saraf v. Peppy Store (the Jackie Shroff order) and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan v. Aishwaryaworld.com, and said the plaintiff "has a right to protect her name, likeness and all other attributes of her personality".¹

The operative paragraphs are:¹

• Para 49(a). Defendants 1 to 17, with their associates, subscribers, employees and persons claiming through them, are restrained from exploiting her name, image, voice, likeness or other persona attributes without authorisation, "through the use of technology, including but not limited to Artificial Intelligence", and the order lists "AI Chatbots" among the technologies. The same paragraph restrains the sale of merchandise using her persona and passing off.
• Para 49(b). Defendants 1, 2 and 4 to 17 must take down the URLs in Annexure A, which include chatbot URLs on character.ai and janitorai.com, within 36 hours. Content of this kind is "liable to be forthwith taken down from the public space".
• Procedure. The plaintiff was exempted from pre-institution mediation, the two-month notice to MeitY and DoT, and advance service on Defendants 1 to 17; she could file confidential documents under seal; and she had to comply with Order XXXIX Rule 3 within two weeks. The suit was made returnable before the Joint Registrar on 10 April 2026 and the injunction application before the court on 6 July 2026.

The order does not expressly prohibit users from creating chatbots using her name, image or voice; that prohibition follows indirectly from the reference to "subscribers" and "AI Chatbots". It does not give separate operative directions to the registrars, MeitY or the DoT.¹

The order is a prima facie, ex parte ruling. It does not make final findings on liability, and it does not discuss whether Character.AI or Janitor AI are intermediaries under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 or whether they can claim safe harbour for content that users create on their services. It treats the two platforms like other defendants, ordering them to remove specific chatbot URLs.¹

That leaves several questions open. These include whether a company that trains and runs the model behind a chatbot is a mere host of user-generated characters, or a publisher of the outputs; what duty a platform has to prevent new chatbots imitating the same person rather than remove listed ones; and how personality rights interact with a user's creation of a fan character. The modification of 6 July 2026, described below, suggests that the scope of any duty to monitor is already contested.

On 6 July 2026 Justice Singh heard an application by Defendant 1, Character Technologies Inc (I.A. 16987/2026, under Order XXXIX Rule 4 CPC), seeking modification of the interim order of 20 March 2026. According to the order, the modification would mean that Defendant 1 is not obliged to stop users from using aspects of the plaintiff's persona beyond her name, image and voice, which the application described as "any other attribute of her persona". Senior Advocate Amit Sibal appeared for Character Technologies, Senior Advocate Swathi Sukumar for Defendant 2, and many other defendants were separately represented. The plaintiff's counsel accepted notice and had no objection, and the court allowed the application "modifying the order to the extent sought".²

Defendant 2 had filed an application under Order I Rule 10(2) CPC (I.A. 12458/2026), which was listed on 10 August 2026, and Defendant 17 had filed another under Order I Rule 10 (I.A. 21407/2026). The orders on those dates do not record their outcome. On 10 August 2026 the court directed that the interim order continue until the next hearing and listed the matter on 14 December 2026.²³

The order is notable in three ways. First, it brings generative-AI companion platforms within the personality-rights regime developed for deepfakes and merchandise. Earlier suits had restrained smaller chatbot sites: the Aishwarya Rai Bachchan order restrained a chatbot site later identified as Janitor AI, which was released from that suit on 12 May 2026 after filing a compliance affidavit and undertaking to follow future takedown orders, and the Kajol order of 20 February 2026 restrained chatbots on spicychat.ai and talkie-ai.com.⁴⁵ This order names Character Technologies, the operator of Character.AI, as a defendant.

Second, the 36-hour deadline matches the shorter deadlines now common in Delhi High Court orders. Third, the modification illustrates how a platform can negotiate the scope of a persona injunction. Narrowing the duty to the plaintiff's name, image and voice, with her consent, limits how far a platform must police every attribute of her persona, and it leaves the more difficult question of imitation by implication unresolved.

The case sits within the wider wave of orders described in the overview entry on AI personality-rights orders.

The suit is pending. The interim injunction of 20 March 2026, as modified on 6 July 2026, continues until the next date of hearing, 14 December 2026.³ As of 15 October 2026, no judgment on the injunction application or any final decree has been verified.