Janhvi Kapoor recalls finding her pics on porn sites in school: ‘The cost you have to pay…'

Bollywood actor Janhvi Kapoor recently talked about the pressure of being a star kid, social media and losing her mom Sridevi right before her Bollywood debut. Talking to Raj Shamani, Kapoor opened up about a fake image of herself on porn sites. She shared that she was just 15 when she found out about her morphed photo on a porn site.

Janhvi Kapoor on her morphed pics

Calling it a weird experience, Janhvi Kapoor said, "I don't know if it was a deepfake, but it was something like that. I saw a picture of me on a porn site. We had IT class in school, and boys used to go on those sites for fun. My pictures were on there. And this was in school. So that was a weird experience."

She added, “At some point, I was like — this is the cost you have to pay. There is no morality in a lot of these things with social media."

Janhvi Kapoor on how AI pictures can affect work

In the same podcast, Janhvi Kapoor expressed her concerns regarding her AI-generated pictures online. “I am not at peace with it. There are visuals of me out there, even shared by official news pages, which are completely AI. I have never worn those clothes or been photographed like that," she said.

Explaining how her work gets affected, she continued, “It gets circulated as if it's something I've put out. That creates a certain kind of impression. If tomorrow I tell a director I'm not comfortable wearing something, someone can pull up those pictures and say, ‘But you've done this before.' Even if they don't say it, it makes you think."

“It upsets me, of course,” she admitted.

However, Janhvi Kapoor reveals that she has found ways to deal with such situations. “I feel like I don't have that much of a voice to complain. There's this attitude — you've got so much in life, thoda seh lo, don't complain. So I don't think my voice has that credibility yet. There will be backlash, and it might take away from the cause," she said.

When Rashmika Mandanna called out her deepfake video

She also shared that several actresses had called out the deepfake pictures online. The first ones to do so were Rashmika Mandanna.

In November 2023, a deepfake video of Mandanna went viral on social media.

The Pushpa actress had shared on X (formerly Twitter), "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,” she said.