Rashmika Mandanna's Deepfake Video Goes Viral, Amitabh Bachchan Calls For Legal Action

Amitabh Bachchan has voiced his support for legal action in the wake of a viral morphed video featuring Rashmika Mandanna. On Sunday, a deepfake video of the Pushpa star surfaced online. In the unverified video, a woman with Rashmika's face was seen entering an elevator while wearing a fitted outfit. The video quickly gained widespread attention, prompting several social media users to clarify that it was, indeed, a deepfake.

A journalist stepped forward to confirm the video's falseness and underscored the urgent need for a legal and regulatory framework to address deepfakes in India. He mentioned the viral video featuring actress Rashmika Mandanna on Instagram but revealed that it was a deepfake video of another person named Zara Patel. He pointed out that, from a deepfake perspective, the video was realistic enough to deceive ordinary social media users. However, upon close examination, a significant discrepancy could be observed at the 1-second mark, where the deepfake changed from the other girl to Rashmika.

Amitabh Bachchan retweeted the journalist's post and expressed his endorsement of taking legal action against such incidents, stating, "Yes, this is a strong case for legal." He showed his support for his Goodbye co-star.

Meanwhile, Rashmika also reacted to the video. She 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 has been occupied with his professional commitments, including his role as the host of Kaun Banega Crorepati. On the silver screen, he has commenced work on a film with Rajinikanth, referred to as Thalapathy 170. This collaboration marks their reunion after 33 years, and the duo recently filmed several scenes in Mumbai.

Lyca Productions, the official handle of X (formerly Twitter), shared an image of the two superstars together in Mumbai, stating, "When Superstar and Shahenshah met on the sets of #Thalaivar170. Reunion on screens after 33 years! #Thalaivar170 is gonna be a double dose of legends! @rajinikanth @SrBachchan. Done with MUMBAI Schedule."

In addition to this project, Amitabh also has "Kalki 2898 AD" with Prabhas in the pipeline.