Abhishek Sharma has moved the Delhi High Court seeking protection of his personality rights, requesting the removal of alleged defamatory AI-generated content on social media.
Sharma wants to stop the unauthorised use of his name, image, voice and likeness that are being circulated online, particularly AI-generated content that portray him in a bad light.
After an initial hearing on Monday, Justice Jyoti Singh has postponed the case to July 9, mentioning that there are systematic discrepancies in the material submitted to the court. The court has asked Sharma to file an extra affidavit, saying that the corresponding screenshots from the infringed URLs were not included in the existing suit.
"There is a real mess up here. You file an affidavit with screenshot matching with your table. Screenshot is way different from what you are showing. I cannot pass an order like this," Justice Singh told Sharma's counsel.
Meta's Advocate Varun Pathak argued that out of the eight URLs submitted by Sharma, only six were accessible. He also mentioned how one of the URL seemed to be a paparazzi picture, arguing that such an image does not necessarily involve a violation of personality rights and would ordinarily be considered under defamation or privacy rather than personality rights.
He also raised the difficulty intermediaries would face if all adverse content circulating online were to be encompassed in personality rights. Differentiating between content critcising the personality and actual fake content would become challenging.
Sharma's counsel, Advocate Thakur, reiterated back, specifying that one of the posts was AI-generated content, where the cricketer's manager is falsely reffered to as his girlfriend and was not just a mere photograph.
The suit is also part of an increased amount of cases that repeatedly cross the thin line between defamation and personality rights. This becomes particularly prominent in incidents which involve deepfakes.
In the past, the Court has protected personality rights of multiple public figures, that include political figures uch as Shashi Tharoor, Bollywood actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and film producer Karan Johar.
