India’s rising cricket star Abhishek Sharma has approached the Delhi High Court seeking an immediate takedown of defamatory, AI-manipulated content circulating on social media. While the court noted clerical mismatches in the paperwork and delayed an emergency order until July 9, the legal battle marks a significant off-field stand for the young opener, who was just named a marquee member of India’s T20I squad for the upcoming Zimbabwe tour.
Indian cricket’s rising superstar Abhishek Sharma has taken a major stand off the field to protect his personal brand. On Tuesday, as reported by Bar and Bench, the opening batter moved the Delhi High Court to protect his “personality rights”—the legal framework that guards a celebrity’s name, image, voice, and likeness from unauthorized commercial use or malicious distortion.
The lawsuit seeks an immediate takedown of several harmful links across social media platforms that allegedly circulate defamatory, artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content targeting the player.
Reality Twisted by Gen-AI Tools
According to Sharma’s legal team, advanced generative AI tools are being deployed online to completely warp reality.
In one notable example cited in the petition, a genuine photograph of Abhishek alongside his professional female talent manager was manipulated using AI. The altered online posts changed the image’s color grading, falsely labeled his manager as his girlfriend, and fabricated a narrative claiming the cricketer was “crying on her shoulders.”
Court Room Procedural Delay: Next Hearing on July 9
Justice Jyoti Singh briefly heard the matter on Tuesday but ultimately adjourned the official hearing to July 9. The court declined to pass an immediate, emergency interim order due to a structural mix-up in the paperwork filed by the cricketer’s legal team.
The judge pointed out that the physical screenshots attached to the lawsuit failed to properly correspond with the index of web links (URLs) provided in the main evidence table. Furthermore, advocate Varun Pathak, representing Meta (Facebook and Instagram), noted that out of eight flagged links, two were already broken and one merely directed to a standard, non-malicious video uploaded by paparazzi.
The court has ordered Sharma’s team to file an additional clarifying affidavit with perfectly matching URLs and screenshots before any formal takedown commands can be issued to tech platforms.
