- Ravi Prakash
Imagine waking up, picking up your phone and finding a video of yourself. The face, the body and the voice are all yours, and everything looks real. But you never did that, never shot that video, never said those words and never went to that place. You tell your family it is a fake, yet a friend forwards the clip and asks whether it is really you. A terrifying question follows: how do you prove it is not you? AI can now take your face, your voice and your expressions, and even digitally convert your body, showing something that never happened as if it truly did. That fear has now entered the world of Indian cinema, and it has done so with two big stars: Junior NTR and Janhvi Kapoor.
The two actors appeared together in *Devara: Part 1*, whose song “Chuttamalle” became a hit. Someone took the real footage from that song, with its real performances by the real artists, and used AI to create a new video. Using Janhvi Kapoor’s face, the creator showed her in a sexually explicit situation. That scene was not in the original song or video, and it never happened. The source footage, the faces and the artists are real, but the scene is not. This, observers note, is the danger of deepfakes.
Junior NTR reacted strongly after learning of the video, describing it as “disgusting, sick, shameless,” in other words horrific, revolting and a shameless act. He condemned the video and said he would take legal action against those who made it and those who circulated it. He also made an appeal that, in his view, is even more important: do not watch it, do not share it and do not engage with it. His reasoning is simple. One person makes a video, ten more download it, a hundred share it and thousands watch it, so the video goes ever more viral while the victim loses control over her own image.
The actor did not stop there. He urged the Central and State governments to take strict action against such misuse of AI and said stronger regulation is needed. His message, in effect, is that this is not just Janhvi Kapoor’s problem. Today it is someone else’s face, and tomorrow it could be the face of someone in our own family.
Janhvi Kapoor herself later responded, describing the experience as “deeply violating” and saying it was “bordering on sexual assault.” This, she indicated, is not merely a case of someone editing her video. Her argument is that her identity was used without her consent to create sexual content. That raises a larger question: can digital abuse reach the level of sexual assault?
This is not only a celebrity story. Set aside NTR, Kapoor and the film industry, and imagine the person in such a video is you. Your phone holds hundreds of photos, your pictures are on Instagram, your videos are on Facebook and your voice is on YouTube. There may be interviews, reels and old photographs of you online. AI can use the data about you that is already on the internet, and you never even need to have used AI yourself, because your digital footprint is enough. Your face, your voice and your identity can all appear on screen, yet the person in the visual is not you.
Nor is this the first such case. Rashmika Mandanna, Kajal, Alia Bhatt and Katrina Kaif are among the celebrities who have been targeted with manipulated or deepfake content. What is changing now is that the technology is becoming easier, faster and accessible to more people, and deepfakes are growing more convincing. The question is no longer whether a fake video can be made, because we know it can. The real question is how much of your identity AI can recreate.
The controversy has also reached the courts. Samantha Ruth Prabhu took legal action in the Bombay High Court against unauthorized digital content, including AI-generated content, that used her name, image and voice. The court directed platforms to remove the objectionable content. The case sharpens a bigger question: who owns your face? Does it belong to you, or to the social media platform? Can anyone use a photo simply because it is on the internet, or do you alone hold the right over your face, your voice and your identity?
The threat goes well beyond sexual deepfakes. Imagine AI cloning your voice and someone calling your parents to say, “I need money right now,” in a voice that is exactly yours. Imagine your boss receiving a video in which you say things you never said. Imagine a fake video of a CEO announcing that a company is shutting down, of a politician saying things he never said, or of a police officer issuing a fake order. In that case, this is no longer only a celebrity problem. It becomes fraud, blackmail, reputation damage, financial crime and misinformation, and it could even become a national security problem.
The most dangerous aspect of a deepfake is that it does not have to fool everyone. Fooling a few people is enough, because by the time you prove it is fake, someone will already have downloaded it, screen-recorded it, forwarded it on WhatsApp or uploaded it to another platform. Even if the original is deleted, copies remain. The internet has no undo button.
So can AI destroy your identity? Perhaps the real question is not whether AI can create a fake person, since it can. The truly frightening question is whether AI can make the real you look fake: taking your face, voice, body, words, actions and reputation, and showing you doing something you never did. And what happens if millions of people believe it?
Today it is Janhvi Kapoor, Junior NTR and a celebrity. Tomorrow it could be a journalist, a businessman, a politician, a student, a teacher or the person next door. Or it could be you. That is why, in the age of AI, the real question is not what AI can create but what AI can create that you never did. If AI can steal your face and your voice, alter your body and destroy your reputation, then in the end only one question remains: who owns your identity?
The Junior NTR–Janhvi Kapoor deepfake controversy is not just a fake video story. It may be a warning for all of us.