YouTube channel ‘Decoding Dhandha’ has retracted false claims about Bollywood publicist Dale Bhagwagar after receiving a formal legal notice over a YouTube Shorts video that falsely attributed specific PR work to him. The channel admitted in writing that the video’s content was generated by ChatGPT. This resulted in AI hallucination and a false and fabricated narrative being published and presented to a public audience as fact.
The Decoding Dhandha video, along with its written description, falsely implied that Bhagwagar had handled personal PR for Shah Rukh Khan and Aryan Khan during a controversy, fabricated a claim that he manoeuvred a tirade against Kangana Ranaut and further falsely claimed that he handled PR for “a Maharashtra ex-minister.” The YouTube channel admitted in writing that the video was generated from a ChatGPT script which turned out to be AI hallucination, and that none of these claims had any factual basis whatsoever.
Bhagwagar, Founder of Dale Bhagwagar Media Group, issued a formal legal notice to the channel demanding the immediate removal of the video and a written retraction. The channel complied promptly, removing the video, apologising to Bhagwagar and issuing a written confirmation that the claims were false and unverified, that there was no factual basis for naming Bhagwagar or attributing the said PR work to him, and that all such claims are retracted in their entirety.
Bhagwagar has accepted the retraction and closed the matter. However, as a PR thought leader who has long championed the responsible use of emerging technology, he believes the episode carries a warning that the entire content creator community and the broader public need to take seriously.
“What happened here is not an isolated incident. An AI tool invented specific, detailed and false professional claims about a named individual, and those claims were published to a public audience as fact. The content creator bears equal responsibility here. No one checked. No one verified. The AI hallucinated it, and the channel put it live without a second thought,” he said.
Widely regarded over the years in the news media as the most ethical and trusted publicist in the Indian entertainment industry, Bhagwagar has built his reputation on accuracy, integrity and responsible communications. He pointed out that the disclaimer appended to the video, claiming the content was based on publicly available reports and investigative journalism, was itself generated by the same AI tool and bore no relation to reality.
What makes this episode particularly notable is that Bhagwagar is among the earliest adopters of AI in the Indian PR industry. Bollywood’s only PR guru, as he is often referred to in the media, has written extensively in the news media about artificial intelligence and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), consistently advocating for its adoption by the PR community while simultaneously calling for ethical guardrails in its use. As a PR expert who has set industry trends for around three decades, he has been at the forefront of integrating new technology into communications practice, making him one of the most vocal and credible voices on the subject of responsible AI use.
“A disclaimer generated by the same AI that fabricated the claims it is disclaiming offers absolutely no protection, legally or ethically. That needs to be understood clearly by every content creator using AI to generate videos,” he said.
Recognised across the industry as a Bollywood crisis management specialist, Bhagwagar has represented several high-profile personalities and handled some of the most prominent crisis communications cases in the Indian entertainment industry. He has called on content creators, platform regulators and AI developers alike to treat AI hallucination about named individuals as a serious legal and ethical issue requiring immediate attention.
“Verify before you publish. AI is a tool, not a source. The moment you put a real person’s name into AI-generated content and publish it without verification, you are personally and legally responsible for every false word. The technology does not protect you. The law does not excuse you,” he said.