Congress MP Shashi Tharoor moves Delhi HC against publication of deepfake videos

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Friday moved the Delhi High Court against the publication of AI-generated deepfake videos purportedly showing him “praising Pakistan” and making statements on such “politically sensitive” issues.

Justice Mini Pushkarna issued summons to social media platforms X and Meta Platforms as well as the Centre on the lawsuit by the Thiruvananthapuram MP and current chairperson of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, and indicated she would pass an interim order in his favour.

Senior advocate Amit Sibal, appearing for Tharoor, submitted that unknown entities were repeatedly publishing fake videos by misappropriating his face, voice and other attributes of his personality, which ought to be taken down.

The senior counsel argued that the videos are detrimental to Tharoor’s reputation as a patriot and chairperson of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs. “India Today and PTI have put publicly that these are fake videos, yet the public continues to have the impression that the videos are genuine and authentic,” he said.

“I am a former external affairs minister. It matters to India’s standing as well... It is liable to be misused by foreign states,” Sibal said, adding that even though the authorities took down several offending URLs pursuant to a grievance raised by Tharoor under the IT Rules and to the police, the content keeps re-surfacing.

Sibal emphasised that Tharoor is a public figure whose reputation is being tarnished by such deep-fake videos. Counsel for Meta submitted that the offending content on Instagram was made inaccessible this morning.

In the lawsuit, Tharoor said that in or around March 2026, he discovered a “sophisticated, malicious campaign orchestrated by unknown infringers” across social media platforms, maliciously depicting him making politically sensitive statements praising Pakistan.

The lawsuit contended that the unauthorised cloning and exploitation of Tharoor’s likeness, voice and mannerisms infringed his personality and publicity rights and also constituted a serious violation of his right to privacy.

“These infringers have weaponised artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to generate hyper-realistic audio-visual deepfakes by cloning the plaintiff’s face, voice, vocabulary, and mannerisms. These fabricated videos maliciously depict the plaintiff making politically sensitive statements that he never made,” the plea said.

“Crucially, as the plaintiff was actively campaigning for the Kerala Legislative Assembly elections 2026 in March and early April — the disinformation campaign was especially damaging. It was a deliberate attempt to tarnish his patriotic credentials, manipulate public perception, and unlawfully interfere with the democratic electoral process,” it added.

Several public figures, like actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan and Salman Khan, Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, podcaster Raj Shamani and Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan, have previously approached the high court seeking protection of their personality and publicity rights. The high court granted them interim relief.

Recently, the high court also protected the personality rights of cricketer Gautam Gambhir and actors Sonakshi Sinha, Vivek Oberoi and Allu Arjun by granting interim relief.