Media365
3 min readMumbaiOct 11, 2026 06:03 PM IST
Long before Jr NTR defended his Devara: Part 1 co-star Janhvi Kapoor over AI-generated edits of their song “Chutamalle”, Aishwarya Lekshmi had taken a firm stand against similar AI-generated content featuring her. The 34-year-old actor even decided to step away from Instagram over a year ago, despite objections from her management team.
Sharing why she has been on an Instagram detox for over a year now, Aishwarya told SCREEN, “I really don’t like that because there’ll be some picture I put, that’ll be taken as the backdrop of their AI edits.”
However, Aishwarya Lekshmi acknowledges that though she’s away from the noise on the social media platform, it hasn’t stopped the AI edits of her or other female actors from circulating online. “Not that it’s something not happening now, but I feel it’s something I can’t control. But at that point, I was done with it, and I didn’t want to see more of it, so I took a step back. I’m not performing and creating more chaos,” said the actor.
Why Aishwarya Lekshmi doesn’t want to ‘perform’ on Instagram
Maintaining distance from Instagram may have cost her some brand deals, but Aishwarya Lekshmi argues that it’s improved her as an actor. “As an actor, I think I don’t have the pressure to perform anymore. Sometimes, when your career isn’t going well, but you’re under pressure to put up a post and make it look like everything’s hunky-dory and all colourful, that pressure gets to you,” explained Aishwarya.
The actor admitted that this pressure also got to her “at a certain point of my life.” However, since taking a break from Instagram, she has only grown more confident in herself and her abilities as an actor. “Right now, I don’t have the pressure to be somebody else on social media, and I don’t want to be that,” she added, maintaining that she has no plans to return to the social media platform anytime soon.
Aishwarya Lekshmi was last seen in Balaji Mohan’s Tamil romantic show #Love on Netflix. She played Tara, a dating app owner who begins to feel drawn to Matthew (Arjun Das), a “nepo baby” and an investor in a rival dating app. Created by Soundarya Rajinikanth, #Love marks Aishwarya’s debut in long format.
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Meanwhile, earlier this week, Janhvi Kapoor took to her Instagram Stories and blasted the viral AI edit of her “Chuttamalle” song. “The criminal misuse of technology to objectify women and circulate fictionalised content without consent is deeply violating, bordering on sexual assault. Almost every woman in my industry has faced some version of this, and women everywhere are increasingly being subjected to it,” she stated, before thanking Jr NTR and other Telugu superstars for raising their voice against this malpratice.
