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Freedom251 › Blog › AI deepfakes

Vishnu Manchu Calls for a Permanent System to Tackle AI Deepfakes and Online Abuse

By Freedom251 Team · · 4 min read

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Vishnu Manchu, president of the Movie Artists Association (MAA), has called for Telugu film bodies to meet and create a permanent system to address AI deepfakes, impersonation, targeted online abuse and alleged coordinated campaigns against films. The mechanism is a proposal: reporting published on 6 October 2026 does not say it has been formed.

What Manchu proposed

Cinema Express reported on 6 October 2026 that Manchu wanted a meeting involving the Telugu Film Chamber, the Producers Council, MAA and other stakeholders to establish a permanent, industry-wide mechanism. The report describes a call for action, not an existing body, policy or enforcement process.

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Manchu said MAA was compiling information about accounts and networks repeatedly involved in targeted abuse and malicious campaigns, including accounts that misuse actors’ photographs and identities. That reported compilation is distinct from the proposed system; it does not by itself establish wrongdoing by any account or a formal process for investigating or penalizing one.

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As Manchu put it, as quoted by Cinema Express: “Not another meeting that ends with a photograph. Not another phone call. A system.” The Times of India also reported that line in its coverage of his call.

The reported deepfake incident behind the call

The immediate context was a manipulated video involving Janhvi Kapoor and Jr NTR’s song “Chuttamalle,” which the news reports describe as an AI deepfake. Manchu called the incident a warning rather than an isolated case. The underlying video has not been independently examined for this article, so its content and production cannot be verified here.

Cinema Express quoted Manchu as saying: “The disturbing AI deepfake incident that has rightly angered our industry should not be looked at as an isolated incident. It is a warning.”

Deepfakes and alleged film sabotage are related concerns, not the same allegation

Manchu also raised a broader concern about what he described as organized and targeted negativity aimed at films, actors and filmmakers. He distinguished such alleged coordination from criticism, reviews, trolling and disagreement, which he said are part of cinema. His position was that audiences should be able to judge a film after seeing it, rather than face a campaign intended to damage it in advance.

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In the same reported discussion, Manchu referred to Sundeep Kishan and the film The Paradise, in connection with allegations of pre-release negativity and an approach to court seeking protection from content alleged to be defamatory or damaging. Those claims are allegations, not adjudicated findings. They should not be treated as proof that criticism of the film was coordinated or unlawful.

Manchu’s quoted distinction was: “A film should succeed or fail because audiences watch it and decide. Criticism, reviews, trolling and disagreement are part of cinema today. But a coordinated campaign to damage a film before audiences have even seen it is not criticism. It is sabotage.”

He also said: “Freedom of expression must always be protected. But anonymity cannot become a weapon to abuse, defame, sexually violate or deliberately destroy someone.” The reported remarks frame the proposed response as a way to address abuse and impersonation without suppressing ordinary criticism; the reporting does not specify how a future system would define or review those categories.

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What Aadhaar-linked accountability means in this discussion

Cinema Express reported that Manchu discussed actor Ram Pothineni’s suggestion of Aadhaar-linked accountability for online identities and said it “deserves serious discussion.” That is a reported proposal, not evidence that Aadhaar-linked accounts have been adopted by MAA, Telugu film bodies or the government.

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The coverage does not set out how identity checks would work, who would hold identifying information, what safeguards would protect privacy, or how mistaken abuse reports could be challenged. Those are consequential questions for any future proposal; they cannot be answered from the reported call alone.

What India’s existing rules and reporting routes provide

A separate government framework already applies to platforms and complaints. In a Press Information Bureau release dated 6 August 2026, the government said the Information Technology Rules, 2021 were amended on 10 February 2026 to address harms involving synthetically generated information, including deepfakes. The government summary says permissible AI-generated material must carry clear labels and traceable metadata, and describes stronger platform due-diligence requirements concerning harmful content, including impersonation and non-consensual intimate imagery.

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The release also describes removal and grievance timelines with specific conditions. It says the time for removal after specified valid government or court notices was reduced from 36 hours to 3 hours; that is not a universal three-hour deadline triggered by every user report. It also describes faster grievance handling for sensitive matters. The release summarizes government requirements and implementation measures; it is not an independent assessment of how consistently they work in individual cases.

The government identifies several routes for complaints and appeals:

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  • Contact the relevant platform’s grievance officer about content or a complaint.
  • Use a Grievance Appellate Committee route if appealing an eligible grievance decision.
  • Report deepfakes or content misuse through the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal.
  • Police and state or union territory law-enforcement agencies investigate cybercrime under the applicable framework.

The PIB release also names public-sector or academic detection initiatives, including Saakshya, AI Vishleshak and an IIT Kharagpur real-time voice deepfake-detection project. Its description does not establish that these tools are available to consumers or effective for a particular video or case.

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What remains unknown about the proposed industry mechanism

The available reporting does not establish that the requested meeting has taken place or that a permanent system has been approved. It also does not specify who would run the mechanism, what evidence it would consider, how people or accounts would be notified, whether there would be an appeal, or what action it could take.

Those details matter because an industry body, a social platform and a government agency have different authority and responsibilities. Any workable system would need a clear way to distinguish impersonation, non-consensual intimate imagery and coordinated abuse from criticism and reviews—and a transparent process for correcting errors. Until details are announced, those are open design questions, not features that can be attributed to Manchu’s proposal.

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AI deepfakesIndia IT Rulesonline abuseTelugu cinemaVishnu Manchu

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