The Delhi High Court on Friday said it will pass orders for the immediate removal of deepfake videos created using AI tools that falsely portrayed Congress MP Shashi Tharoor as making politically sensitive remarks.
A bench of justice, Mini Pushkarna, further said that she would also issue directions restraining entities from misusing Tharoor’s persona, thereby protecting his personality rights.
“Orders will be passed. It will be uploaded,” Justice Pushkarna told Tharoor’s lawyer Amit Sibal.
The court issued the direction while hearing Tharoor’s suit seeking protection of his personality rights by restraining entities from misusing his persona without his consent.
This followed Tharoor’s lawyer Amit Sibal, submitting that his client’s identity was being misused to create deepfake videos containing politically sensitive remarks, thereby harming his reputation.
He further informed the court that although several fact-checks had confirmed the videos were fake, their continued circulation on social media platforms could lead people to believe they were genuine and potentially enable misuse by foreign governments.
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Sibal further submitted that the videos were previously taken down following complaints made to the Centre and the Delhi DCP, but had resurfaced through different URLs and were again accessible on platforms such as X, Facebook, and Instagram.
He thus urged the court to pass an order for the take-down of the videos and restrain the entities from misusing his client’s personal attributes.
Meta’s lawyer submitted that the videos on its platform were taken down earlier this morning, making the links inaccessible.
