Unless you have been hiding under the proverbial rock, it's been hard to miss the the Modi, Meloni, Melody toffee moment ( PM Narendra Modi presented the Italian head of state Giorgia Meloni with a packet of India's iconic Rs. 1 Melody toffee).
The digital footprint of the "Melody Moment" easily generated millions of posts, stories, and interactions worldwide. And keywords like "Parle" and "Melody" were trending at the number 1 spot and among most-searched terms on both Google and X (formerly Twitter) globally.
The frenzy that gripped the public can be seen from the fact that, retail investors rushed to profit off the viral trend and piled into shares of a listed company named Parle Industries, causing its stock to lock into a 5% upper circuit within minutes. The catch? Parle Industries handles real estate and paper waste recycling; the actual manufacturer of Melody toffees is Parle Products, which is a privately held, unlisted company
The original video selfie posted by PM Meloni received a 100 million views within just a few hours and quickly climbed past 175 million views on Instagram alone.
There were plenty of great newsjacking moments by brands on the Melody toffee moment by AIr India, Blinkit, Zepto, SBI Securities, YesMadam and Instamart. PArle took out front page ads thanking PM Modi and also shared the original post.
None of these ads used any images or AI variants of the images of the heads of state. But comms strategy consultant, Karthik Srinivasan soon pointed out on LinkedIn that a number of brands used AI to generate images of Modi and Meloni to promote their products.
Srinivasan asked, "What is seriously going on? Don't brands fear legal repercussions anymore? How can *so many* brands (and outlets!) so casually use the photos and videos of 2 heads of state for any and every product without any worry? At least before AI, it needed actual people (and effort) to create such visuals and such people may have hesitated before using famous personalities without official contracts.
But now, with AI, things have gone completely haywire in the name of moment marketing even though this anything but that because the barrier to content creation is zero."
WIll AI platforms raise fees soon?
There are two questions to ask following the post above. First of all, has AI really made newsjacking easier and cheaper? Secondly, what are the legal implications of using public figures, especially heads of state, for commercial purposes?
Addressing the first question, PR professional Mahek Pandey, who has developed the multilingual PR measurement app NexusAI, says that AI has certainly made content drafting easier. What took 4 to 5 hours can be done in 30 minutes if needed. The cost of taking out a piece of newsjacking content, she says, can drop by 50 to 60 per cent.
However, Pandey feels there are costs not being taken into account. These include tooling subscriptions, fact-checking and verification overheads, and legal review of AI output.
"I feel in the next 18 months or so, you will see true costs emerge. At the moment, AI platforms offer free versions, which shield content creators from the impact of paying up. At some point, these free versions will not be available, and that's when the real costs of AI will emerge. Net effect is reallocation, not elimination: budget shifts from production to strategy, insight and relationships."
Another issue, according to Pandey, is that currently all commonly used platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity are hosted outside India. There is a data sovereignty issue involved in using these platforms that remains. Pandey also points out that many corporates are asking their comms partners to be careful in using their data on AI platforms. Some firms have it written into their contracts to define the use of AI in content generation.
If AI-based content has to be generated safely, Pandey advocated for having servers based in India, not an easily addressed issue.
With regard to the legality of it, Srinivasan avers, "If fake AI endorsements become normalized, real celebrity contracts could lose credibility and value.
Sure, actors are filing for 'personality rights' left, right, and center in the courts, but imagine if 200 biryani outlets, white goods stores, clothing merchants or notary services use the image/video of any and every famous actor in the many, many small towns of India... on their Instagram and Facebook pages, which court or lawyer is going to go after all of them and sue them?"
Parle and many other brands such as Air India were very careful in avoiding using the images of the two heads of state-Modi and Meloni- in their moment marketing.
Using the PM's image — real or AI-generated — for any trade, advertising, or endorsement purpose is prohibited without prior central government sanction, regardless of how the image is created. The statutory fine is small, but the prohibition is unambiguous, and AI versions attract additional labelling duties under the 2026 IT Rules. The biggest practical risk for a brand is usually reputational and political fallout rather than the ₹500 penalty.
The Legal
Position
Using the PM's image · commercially
Use the PM's face to sell anything and you've broken a 75-year-old law — but what'll actually burn you is the backlash, not the fine.
· IT Rules 2026
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