Cricketer Abhishek Sharma moves Delhi High Court for protection of personality rights

Indian cricketer Abhishek Sharma has filed a suit before the Delhi High Court seeking protection of his personality rights and takedown of alleged defamatory and Artificial Intelligence-generated (AI) content portraying him in bad light.

Justice Jyoti Singh today briefly heard the matter but posted it for further consideration on July 9 after finding that screenshots of the infringing URLs had not been annexed with the suit filed by Sharma.

The Court declined to pass an order without examining the relevant material.

"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," the judge told Sharma's counsel.

The Court asked Sharma to file an additional affidavit bringing on record screenshots matching with the table in annexures of the suit.

"I am not saying I am not inclined to but I cannot pass an order this way," Justice Singh said.

Sharma in the suit has sought takedown of certain infringing content including AI-generated material circulating on social media.

Advocate Varun Pathak, representing Meta, told the Court that out of the eight URLs provided by Sharma, two were inaccessible. He added that one URL contains content uploaded by paparazzi and may not involve personality rights.

However, Sharma's counsel said the upload was AI-generated. He said that in one of the posts, his manager was referred to as his girlfriend.

"What is it indicating? Is that he is crying over the shoulders of another, and it's an AI-generated image. It is not a paparazzi issue. He is clicked with the manager and then given a different color to it using artificial intelligence," he said.