The Delhi High Court said it will issue an interim order to Meta and Google to remove objectionable web links targeting two-time World Cup winner and current Indian men’s team head coach Gautam Gambhir. The decision comes a week after Gambhir filed a civil suit seeking protection of his personality and publicity rights, citing abuse of his name and image through AI-generated deepfakes.
The matter was heard by Justice Jyoti Singh. At the outset, advocate Jai Anant Dehadrai, appearing for Gambhir, thanked the court for giving it time to rectify the deficiencies in the application.
He informed the court that a number of the defendants had already taken down the illegal content. However, he pointed out that new instances and replications continue to appear online, and was looking for a dynamic command to deal with reuploading.
According to a Live Law report, after hearing from both sides, Judge Singh said she would issue an interim injunction and ask Meta, Google and Amazon Sellers to remove the infringing content. The Delhi HC also said it will ask Google and Meta to provide Basic Subscriber Information (BSI), Internet Protocol (IP) credentials of uploaders.
What did the attorney for Meta and Google say?
In court, Meta’s attorney said the infringing URLs and content had been removed and were inaccessible as of Wednesday. Meta’s attorney presented the court with a list of URLs to justify its position. The court further noted that one of the URLs was the entire profile.
“A statement is taken on record. If the plaintiff comes across any infringing links identical to the links in question; the same will be brought to the notice of defendant no. 13 (Meta) through counsel and necessary action will be taken within 36 hours. The plaintiff will have an opportunity to approach the court,” the court said.
A Google attorney present in court said one URL in the complaint had already been removed. “Please put in writing what you took off. Everyone sit down. I will issue an order and I will be with it,” added the court and passed the case.
Earlier he was looking for Gambhir ₹2.5 million in damages from the defendants for allegedly misusing his name and images for commercial gain. In fact, he also said that several deeply fake and manipulated AI-generated videos are being circulated online with false claims that he never made, and sought to have such misleading content removed from social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter).
List of personalities with protected personality rights
Gambhir became the second former Indian cricketer after Sunil Gavaskar to have his personal rights protected. Meanwhile, the coordination bench had earlier issued orders to protect the personal rights of singer Jubin Nautiyal, Deputy CM of Andhra Pradesh Pawan Kalyan, actors Kajol Devgan, R Madhavan and NTR Junior, Nagarjuna, Bollywood actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and film producer Karan Johar.
According to Live Law, Bollywood superstar Salman Khan has also filed a similar suit. Not just cricketers, actors and politicians, the coordination bench also issued orders to protect the personality rights of Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and journalist Sudhir Chaudhary.
