Rashmika Mandanna deepfake video: Mrunal Thakur, Naga Chaitanya demand action

Rashmika Mandanna's deepfake video, which surfaced on Monday, has sparked responses from actors Naga Chaitanya and Mrunal Thakur. Apart from veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan, singer Chinmayi Sripaada too, has responded to the video, which featured social media influencer Zara Patel. Mandanna's face was placed on Patel's body. In the video, Patel was wearing a workout onesie and stepping into an elevator. 

Rashmika, in a post on X, wrote, “I feel really hurt to share this and have to talk about the deepfake video of me being spread online. Something like this is honestly, extremely scary not only for me but also for each one of us who today is vulnerable to so much harm because of how technology is being misused. Today, as a woman and as an actor, I am thankful for my family, friends and well-wishers who are my protection and support system. But if this happened to me when I was in school or college, I genuinely can’t imagine how could I ever tackle this. We need to address this as a community and with urgency before more of us are affected by such identity theft.”

Amitabh Bachchan shared a post of an X user, who wrote, “There is an urgent need for a legal and regulatory framework to deal with deepfake in India.” Bachchan wrote, “Yes this is a strong case for legal.” 

Deepfake is when a person's image is altered to place another's picture on it to promote false news. Celebrities who have become victims of deepfakes include Scarlett Johansson and Tom Hanks among others. 

Scarlett Johansson is taking legal action against an app for using AI to use her voice and likeness for an ad. Tom Hanks, had, last month, said that an ad for a dental plan used an AI-generated likeness without consent. Actor Kristen Bell said her image had been manipulated and used in explicit content on the internet in June 2020. Known YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson's images were used in misleading advertisements that claimed to offer $2 iPhones to viewers. 

“Several months ago, a video of one of our most favourite actors in an AI avatar performed to Kaavaalaa from Jailer was released — only it wasn’t her. It was a Deep Fake. Nobody knows for sure whether Ms Simran had consented in advance to her likeness being used in the Deep Fake AI rendering of Kaavaalaa. She shared it on her social media pages as well. Now a deepfake Rashmika video has surfaced and I just saw her Instagram story where she genuinely looks disturbed - In a country where women’s bodies are exploited every day, deepfake is going to be the next weapon they use to target and harass and blackmail girls to extort, blackmail and rape,” singer Chinmayi Sripaada wrote on X.

Actor Naga Chaitanya wrote, “It’s truly disheartening to see how technology is being misused and the thought of what this can progress to in the future is even scarier. Action has to be taken and some kind of law has to be enforced to protect people who have been and will be a victim of this. Strength to you.”

“Shame on people who resort to such things. It shows there is no conscience left at all in such people. Thank you @rashmika_mandanna for speaking up, and for addressing this issue that so far we have seen glimpses of, but a lot of us chose to remain silent.  Every day, there are morphed, edited videos of female actors floating around on the internet zooming into inappropriate body parts. Where are we heading as a community, and as a society? We may be actresses in the "limelight" but at the end of the day, each one of us is human. Why aren't we talking about it? Don't remain silent, now is not the time,” actor Mrunal Thakur wrote.