Rashmika Mandanna’s Deepfake video: Naga Chaitanya, Mrunal Thakur come out in support; call for action

After Amitabh Bachchan, celebrities such as Mrunal Thakur, Naga Chaitanya, and Chinmayi Sripada have come out in support of Rashmika Mandanna over her Deepfake video and talked about the misuse of artificial intelligence (AI).

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

Reacting to Rashmika’s tweet, 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 and will be a victim to this. Strength to you.’

Rashmika thanked him for supporting her.

Singer Chinmayi Sripaada also called for nationwide awareness about the issue.

She wrote on X, ‘Several months ago, a video of one of our most favourite actors in an AI avatar performed to Kaavaalaa from Jailer 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 to be used in the Deep Fake AI rendering of Kaavaalaa. She shared it on her social media pages as well.’

She continued, ‘Now a deepfake Rashmika video surfaces and I just saw her Instagram story where she genuinely looks disturbed - In a country where women’s bodies are exploited everyday, Deep Fake is going to be the next weapon they use to target and harass and blackmail girls to extort, blackmail and rape; Their clueless families in one small village or town is not going to understand when the so called maanam / or honour is at stake. Loan apps harass women borrowers with photoshopped images of their faces over porn photos and they can't deal with that. But a Deep Fake is going to be tougher for the usual untrained eye to spot. Everyone doesn’t have high-res displays. I truly hope there is a nationwide awareness campaign that can kickstart urgently to educate the general public about the dangers of deepfakes for girls and to report incidents instead of taking matters into their own hands.’

Reacting to her note, Rashmika wrote, ‘Thank you @Chinmayi for creating awareness on this, hoping strict action is taken and regulated guidelines are put into place.’

Reacting to her Deepfake video, Rashmika had said she was hurt. ‘But if this happened to me when I was in school or college, I genuinely can’t imagine how could I ever tackle this,’ she wrote while calling for strict action in the matter.