May harm democracy: Chandigarh court orders block of AI-generated videos targeting Congress politician

A Chandigarh court has restrained three Facebook pages from circulating videos generated through artificial intelligence (AI) that target Punjab Congress politician Amandeep Kumar.

Civil Judge (Junior Division) Kuldeep Singh passed the ex parte interim injunction order on October 5 against three Facebook pages named Thanedar Uncle, Kachi Laan and Batale Di Rajneeti on a defamation suit filed by Kumar.

The court found that the content flagged by Kumar, including deepfake content that used his image without consent, went beyond healthy public criticism.

"The said pages appears to have political agenda which is beyond the healthy public criticism and apparently maligns the image of an individual without verified facts, knowingly. This is quite serious act done in a very uncontrolled casual manner, which may adversely affect the health of our democracy and a process of manufacturing of public consent,” the court said.

It, therefore, ordered those who uploaded such content to refrain from further disseminating, publishing or uploading AI-generated content targetting Kumar until the next hearing, scheduled on October 22. The court also passed directions to immediately disable public access to or suspend the three Facebook pages until then.

The order came on a suit filed by Kumar, who is also known as Amandeep Jaintipura. Kumar told the court that he is a lawyer practising before the Punjab and Haryana High Court and the Supreme Court and is a political figure associated with the Indian National Congress.

According to the suit, the three Facebook pages had published AI-generated videos in which Kumar’s face and appearance were digitally manipulated to portray him in situations in which he had never participated or consented to being depicted.

Kumar claimed that some of the impugned videos had received about 178,000, 180,000 and 47,800 views. He alleged that the content was intended to ridicule and malign him. The pages, he said, also carried content favourable to Batala’s sitting Aam Aadmi Party MLA Aman Sher Singh alias Sherry Kalsi.

His counsel further argued that Kumar was a frontrunner for the Congress ticket from Batala for the 2027 Punjab Assembly elections.

The AI-generated videos allegedly portrayed him as a drug dealer, an anti-social element and, in one instance, as a dancer making gestures with a woman. Kumar argued that this went beyond healthy political criticism and amounted to misuse of technology to damage his public image.

The court also examined a pen drive containing the videos and independently verified one of the links through the mobile phone of its judgment writer.

One video, the court recorded, portrayed an AI-generated version of Kumar as a middleman for settling rape cases. The video allegedly showed a conversation in which Kumar suggested approaching Congress leader Partap Bajwa for settling such cases. MLA Sherry Kalsi was referred to positively in such content.

After examining the material, the court prima facie found that the pages appeared to have a political agenda extending beyond legitimate public criticism.

The court consequently restrained the three pages from further disseminating, publishing or uploading AI-generated content involving Kumar until the next hearing.

Kumar was represented by advocates Harinder Deep Singh Bains, Jasdeep Singh Dhillon, Himmat Singh Bajwa and Abhay Singh Mann.

[Read Order]