The Delhi High Court on Wednesday said that it will pass orders to Meta and Google to take down web links which are unauthorisedly misusing the name and images of Indian men's national cricket team coach Gautam Gambhir to sell their products/ merchandise.
Justice Jyoti Singh said she will pass a detailed order asking Meta and Google to provide BSI details and take down links highlighted on behalf of Gambhir.
Gambhir moved the Court seeking damages of ₹2.5 crore against entities misusing his name and images to market and sell merchandise and also employing Artificial Intelligence (AI) videos and deepfakes to spread misinformation.
He also sought directions to remove such infringing content.
As per his suit, there is a coordinated campaign of digital impersonation, AI-generated deepfakes, and unauthorised commercial exploitation of Gambhir's personality.
The plea said that beginning in 2025 there has been a sharp and alarming increase in fabricated digital content across Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, and Facebook about the former cricketer.
Multiple accounts deployed artificial intelligence, face-swapping, and voice-cloning technologies to create realistic videos falsely depicting Gambhir making statements he never made — including a fraudulent "resignation announcement" that garnered over 29 lakh views.
Beyond social media, major e-commerce platforms were facilitating the sale of posters and merchandise bearing his name and likeness without any authorisation, the press statement said.
Gambhir's suit has been filed against 16 defendants including identified social media accounts (JanKey Frames, Bhupendra Paintola, Legends Revolution, gustakhedits, cricket_memer45, GemsOfCrickets, Crickaith, Sunny Upadhyay, @imRavY_), e-commerce platforms (Amazon, Flipkart), platform intermediaries (Meta Platforms Inc., X Corp., Google LLC / YouTube), and the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MEITY) and Department of Telecommunications (DoT) as proforma parties to facilitate implementation of any court order.
When the matter was heard today, Gambhir's counsel Jai Anant Dehadrai said that Gambhir’s personality is being commercially exploited by sale of merchandise on e-commerce sites.
The counsel for Google submitted that some of the infringing content has already been taken down.
Meta too handed over a document to show the list of links that are now inaccessible.
The counsel for Amazon said that the infringing links do not specifically identify the listings of the product.
The Court then said that it will pass a take down order with respect to the links highlighted by Gambhir.