Abhishek Sharma (Annie’s photo)
NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday considered the evolving scope of personality rights while hearing a case filed by Indian cricketer Abhishek Sharma, who sought protection from the alleged unauthorized use of his name, image and likeness across online platforms, including artificial intelligence-generated content.The matter came up before Justice Jyoti Singh, who closely examined several web links identified by Sharma as violating his personal rights. During the hearing, the Court also made important observations about the increasingly complex relationship between personality rights and defamation in the digital age.
Delhi HC flags the intersection of personality rights and defamation
While considering the competing submissions, Justice Singh noted that disputes over online content often blur the distinction between defamation and rights of personality.“We also find this every day that there is a fine line between defamation and rights of personality. It is in constant flux. There is a little bit of overlap. A defamatory matter may have an element of rights of personality,” Justice Singh observed.The court’s remarks came as it considered whether the disputed online content merely contained objectionable speech or amounted to unauthorized exploitation of Sharma’s identity through artificial intelligence.
The controversy revolves around the image modified by artificial intelligence
While appearing for Meta, advocate Varun Pathak informed the court that of the eight URLs currently under consideration, two of them are no longer accessible. Pointing to one of the remaining links, Pathak asserted that it appeared to be a “paparazzi-type” post and, in his view, did not amount to a violation of personality rights.However, Sharma’s lawyer strongly disagreed with this characterization.Lawyer Thakur, who represents the cricketer, said the case was not about a regular photo taken by photographers.
Instead, he asserted that the original photo of Sharma with his manager had been manipulated using artificial intelligence by changing its appearance and context, resulting in a misleading AI-generated image.According to the plaintiff, the digitally altered image falsely conveyed a different impression and amounted to an unauthorized use of Sharma’s character and identity.In response to the court’s observations, Pathak said false or objectionable statements about an individual typically fall within the areas of defamation or privacy and not personality rights.He also asserted that extending personality rights claims to include all harmful online content would create serious practical difficulties for intermediaries.According to Meta, Sharma initially took about 25 URLs to court, but the number of allegedly infringing links later rose to nearly 4,000.Accepting such an expansive interpretation would effectively require moderators to “clean the Internet” of content critical of the plaintiff, regardless of whether it actually violates personality rights, Pathak said.
The matter was taken up for further hearing
After hearing both sides, the Delhi High Court adjourned further consideration of the matter till July 9, stating that certain issues related to the complaint required attention.The suit is among a growing number of personality rights cases filed before the Delhi High Court involving celebrities seeking protection from unauthorized commercial use or manipulation of their names, images, likenesses and identities by artificial intelligence.With the rapid rise of artificial intelligence tools capable of producing realistic images and videos, courts are increasingly being asked to examine claims involving deepfakes, digitally altered content, and the unauthorized use of public figures.
