Delhi High Court protects Gautam Gambhir's personality rights

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has protected the personality rights of Indian men’s cricket team head coach Gautam Gambhir by restraining several social media users from publishing any unauthorised AI-generated content using his name, image, voice or any other attributes of his persona.

Justice Jyoti Singh, in an interim order on a lawsuit by Gambhir, said that as one of the “most decorated cricketers of this country”, he has the right to “protect his name, likeness and all other attributes of his personality and no third party has a right to use these attributes without his consent/authorisation”.

Gambhir, who played 58 Tests, 147 ODIs and 37 T20 internationals for India between 2004 and 2016, sought protection of his personality and publicity rights from a coordinated campaign of digital impersonation, AI-generated deepfakes, and unauthorised commercial exploitation, available across social media platforms.

The plea said that several social media accounts used artificial intelligence (AI), face-swapping, and voice-cloning technologies to create realistic videos falsely depicting Gambhir.

Additionally, merchandise bearing his image was also being sold online, it said.

"Till the next date of hearing, defendants No. 1 to 10 (including unknown entities) are restrained from using and/or in any manner, directly or indirectly, exploiting or misappropriating plaintiff's: (i) names Gautam Gambhir, Gauti and GG; (ii) image; (iii) voice; and (iv) likeness and/or any other attribute of his persona, without his authorisation or consent, for any commercial and/or personal gain, through the use of technology, including but not limited to artificial intelligence, generative artificial intelligence, machine learning, deepfakes, AI chatbots, face morphing and/or any other mediums and formats, amounting to violation of plaintiff's personality/publicity rights," the court said in the order passed on March 25.

“The said defendants are also restrained from creating, publishing, uploading, sharing, resharing, disseminating and/or amplifying in any manner, any photographs, audio recordings, video recordings and/or any audio-visual depictions featuring and/or using any attributes of plaintiff's persona, including through style of speech, face swapping, morphing, superimposing and/or any AI generated or deepfake representation,” it said, and listed the matter for next hearing on May 19.

The court also directed e-commerce websites Amazon and Flipkart, and social media platforms Google and Meta Platforms Inc, to take down certain offending content within 36 hours.

Advocate Jai Anant Dehadrai, Gambhir's counsel, earlier argued that the offending content had "material consequence" on Gambhir as there were fabricated videos purportedly showing him resigning as the head coach after a poor performance or assaulting a fellow player.

Asserting that Gambhir has 23 years of national service as a player and is now a coach, Dehadrai sought an interim order from the court at this stage to restrain several entities, including unknown defendants, from misusing his personality rights.

One of the social media accounts published face-swapped content by superimposing Gambhir's image onto that of Mahatma Gandhi, which garnered over lakhs of views and constituted unauthorised digital impersonation, misrepresentation and a grave violation of his personality rights and commercial reputation, apart from being disrespectful to the father of the nation, Dehadrai contended.