The court has made it known to Meta, Google and the like that they should have a takedown strategy in place. This comes after the actor put in a complaint about morphed content and other AI contrivances. There is a sense of urgency from the bench; protective orders are in the offing, and the parties have been asked to see eye to eye on how to clear out the bad posts without collateral damage to the good ones.
What the court wants next
Justice Madhav J Jamdar is set to hand down his orders on July 6. In the meantime, he has put the onus on everyone to put together a workable protocol for weeding out content that is said to be in violation, making sure no real links are taken down by mistake.
We will be back in court on July 6 for that, with some form of interim relief to be had.
Platforms push back against blanket takedowns
Representing Google and Meta, their counsel says they will be happy to nix the URLs Zinta has put forward if they are obscene or otherwise problematic. What they won’t stand for is a sledgehammer approach – an order that makes them police everything or yank every link that gets a flag.
Then you have a domain name registrar making the point that they only register the name, they don’t tell you where the social links are going.
Why Zinta went to court
It’s all about the deepfakes, the doctored images, the memes and chatbot avatars that, in Zinta’s view, are an affront to her identity and a breach of her rights and copyright. She has made Meta, Google, a host of websites and registrars part of the case.
Venkatesh Dhond, who is for Zinta, has been at the court saying the quality of these fakes is getting better by the day. He is after some ex parte directions to get the material in the pleadings pulled, and has also gone for John Doe orders to cover any unknowns.
The stakes for fans and platforms
You have to find the line between curbing impersonation and not erasing a fan’s post or a news story. The court has been plain: it wants something that works and is well-aimed.
How the case reached this point
Back on June 16, the court gave Zinta the go-ahead to file against Google and others over the disputed material. Since some of the action was in and out of Mumbai and the platforms aren’t all based here, she was given leave to make her case in this city.
She did so on the 18th. It is on the docket as ‘Preity Zinta v. Google LLC & Ors.’
A wider crackdown on deepfakes
Zinta is in good company. If you look at the last couple of years, you’ll see similar moves from Kartik Aryan, Shatrughan Sinha, Shilpa Shetty, Akshay Kumar, Suneil Shetty, Asha Bhosale and Arijit Singh. It is a pattern: Indian stars are putting up a wall against having their likeness used inappropriately online.
So for those making content, the word is to stay away from unauthorised AI. For the platforms, it is to have a takedown process that is responsive but doesn’t overstep.
The court has underlined a few things:
– Have a protocol for when there is a clear infraction
– Don’t just delete en masse and lose lawful posts in the process
– Be ready for what is coming on July 6
– Make sure the genuine stuff is still there for people to see
What to expect on July 6
Justice Jamdar has let on he is in favour of some protection, but done with care. Whatever he puts in writing will likely be about specific, objectionable items, not a whole class of them, and it will be with an eye to keeping the legitimate side of things safe.
If you’re a fan, it is a sign that deepfakes are now a legal matter of some note. For the big tech, it is a prompt to be more nimble and answer for it.
