Shashi Tharoor moves Delhi High Court over AI deepfake videos ‘praising Pakistan’
New Delhi: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Friday approached the Delhi High Court seeking action against the circulation of AI-generated deepfake videos that allegedly show him praising Pakistan and making politically sensitive remarks.
Justice Mini Pushkarna issued summons to social media platforms X and Meta Platforms, along with the Centre, in response to the lawsuit. The court also indicated that it was inclined to pass an interim order in Tharoor’s favour.
Appearing for the Thiruvananthapuram MP and chair of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, senior advocate Amit Sibal argued that unidentified individuals had repeatedly published fabricated videos by misusing Tharoor’s face, voice and personal attributes. He urged the court to direct the removal of the content.
Sibal told the court that the videos had caused serious harm to Tharoor’s reputation as a patriot and as chair of the parliamentary panel on external affairs.
“India Today and PTI have publicly stated that these are fake videos, yet many people continue to believe they are genuine,” Sibal submitted.
He further argued that, as a former external affairs minister, the matter carried wider implications for India’s international standing and could potentially be exploited by foreign states. According to Sibal, although several URLs had already been removed following complaints under the IT Rules and representations to the police, the material continued to reappear online.
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Counsel representing Meta informed the court that the disputed Instagram content had been made inaccessible earlier in the day.
In his plea, Tharoor stated that he became aware in March 2026 of what he described as a “sophisticated, malicious campaign” conducted by unidentified actors across social media platforms. The allegedly fabricated videos portrayed him making statements in support of Pakistan that he never made.
The suit claimed that the unauthorised use of his likeness, voice and mannerisms amounted to an infringement of his personality and publicity rights, as well as a serious violation of his privacy.
“These infringers have weaponised artificial intelligence and machine learning to create hyper-realistic audio-visual deepfakes by cloning the plaintiff’s face, voice, vocabulary and mannerisms,” the plea stated.
The filing further alleged that the campaign intensified while Tharoor was actively campaigning during the 2026 Kerala Assembly elections, making the misinformation particularly damaging.
“It was a deliberate attempt to tarnish his patriotic credentials, manipulate public perception and unlawfully interfere with the democratic electoral process,” the plea added.
A number of prominent public figures have previously sought protection from the Delhi High Court against unauthorised use of their likeness through AI-generated content and other forms of digital manipulation. Those granted interim relief include actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Salman Khan, spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, journalist Sudhir Chaudhary, podcaster Raj Shamani and Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan.
More recently, the court also extended interim protection to cricketer Gautam Gambhir and actors Sonakshi Sinha, Vivek Oberoi and Allu Arjun.