Delhi High Court protects Shashi Tharoor's personality rights, blocks deepfakes praising Pakistan

The Delhi High Court on Friday protected the personality rights of Congress Member of Parliament (MP) Shashi Tharoor.

Justice Mini Pushkarna restrained the misappropriation, reproduction or imitation of Tharoor's name, visual likeness, image, voice, "signature oratorial cadence", manner of speaking and "highly refined vocabulary" to create any deepfakes, morphed videos or audio.

The Court also directed Meta and X to remove and block deepfake videos of Tharoor allegedly praising the Pakistani foreign policy.

"In case, during the pendency of the suit, the plaintiff discovers any more false, fake and infringing videos/posts not originating from or associated with the plaintiff, the plaintiff shall be at liberty to approach defendant nos. 2 and 3 [X and Meta] through the counsels who have entered appearance, for taking down/blocking any further content which is similar to the subject matter of the present suit," the Court added.

It also directed the social media intermediaries to provide Tharoor with basic subscriber information, IP login details, phone numbers, and email addresses of the persons who created and uploaded his deepfakes. uploaders

Justice Pushkarna passed the interim injunction order after Tharoor filed a suit for personality rights infringment.

He argued that there has been a malicious campaign orchestrated by unknown infringers across various digital platforms. He said that the infringers have weaponised artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to generate hyper-realistic audio-visual deepfakes by cloning his face, voice, vocabulary, and mannerisms.

Deepfakes have been created showing him praising Pakistani foreign policy as "absolute brilliance", the plea said.

"These fabricated videos maliciously depict the Plaintiff [Tharoor] making politically sensitive statements that he never made, including 'Pakistan is faring much better diplomatically than India' and praise for Pakistan’s diplomatic strategies as 'absolute brilliance'," the suit stated.

The forgery is so realistic that it has deceived unsuspecting members of the public, the political establishment, as well as various foreign journalists, escalating the matter into an international embarrassment, the plea said.

It added that such content is calculated to mislead the public and has caused serious harm to Tharoor's credibility, reputation, and public standing, resulting in significant mental anguish and harassment.

"The forgery is so realistic that it has deceived unsuspecting members of the public, the political establishment, as well as various foreign journalists, escalating the matter into an international embarrassment," Tharoor argued.

He added that he was campaigning for the recently concluded Kerala elections when the disinformation campaign started, and it was a "deliberate attempt to tarnish his patriotic credentials, manipulate public perception, and unlawfully interfere with the democratic electoral process".

Senior Advocate Amit Sibal along with advocates Tine Abraham, Nikhil Narendran, Pundrikaksh Mitruka, Vivek Krishnani, Ramayni Sood, Ankit Handa, Darpan Sachdeva, Nikhil Narenoran and Kuruvila Jacob of law firm Trilegal appeared for Shashi Tharoor.

Central Government Standing Counsel (CGSC) Rukhmini Bobde with advocates Manish Rawat, Vinayak Aren and Aishwarya represented the Union of India.

Advocates Amee Rana, Nitya Nath and Komal Patha represented Meta.

[Read Order]