Open AI Faces Lawsuit From India’s News Media Outlets
In a significant legal move, India’s largest news outlets, including some of the country’s oldest publications like The Indian Express, The Hindu, and the India Today group, have initiated a lawsuit against OpenAI, the US startup behind the popular chatbot, ChatGPT. The claim centers around alleged unauthorized use of their news content by the AI-driven chatbot.
OpenAI has refuted these allegations, asserting that it utilizes “publicly available data” in accordance with “widely accepted legal precedents.” The dispute highlights ongoing global tensions regarding the use of copyrighted materials to train artificial intelligence systems.
The prominence of the case is underlined by ChatGPT’s extensive reach in India, currently home to the largest user base of the AI application. The chatbot’s training, which involves processing large datasets gathered by internet scraping, is at the heart of the controversy. India’s vast media landscape, featuring nearly 450 news channels and 17,000 newspapers, offers a massive reservoir of content, the legal collection and use of which remains contentious.
In November, Asian News International (ANI), India’s leading news agency, became the first to take legal action against OpenAI in the country. ANI’s lawsuit seeks compensation to the tune of 20 million rupees and accuses OpenAI of illegal use of copyrighted material, allegations the tech company denies.
The lawsuit’s outcome is seen as potentially pivotal, with implications extending far beyond India’s borders. Should ANI emerge victorious, it could trigger additional legal challenges and potentially lead to AI companies entering licensing agreements with content creators—some of which have begun appearing in other regions.
However, a ruling favorable to OpenAI might enhance freedoms around using copyrighted data for training AI models, a scenario that could reshape the operational landscape for generative AI technologies.
ANI’s litigation claims that OpenAI utilized its content without authorization to enhance ChatGPT, a practice that they argue has unjustly benefited the AI enterprise. ANI proposed licensing its content to OpenAI, but the company reportedly declined, opting instead to place the news agency on an internal blocklist, thus restricting interactions with its data. Despite these measures, ANI claims that ChatGPT continues to access its content through its subscribers’ websites, surreptitiously enriching OpenAI.
The legal proceedings also address accusations that ChatGPT has not only generated verbatim content in response to certain prompts but has occasionally falsely attributed statements to ANI, potentially harming the news agency’s credibility and misleading the public.
In its official response, OpenAI maintains that the case should not be adjudicated in India since neither the company nor its servers are located there, and the chatbot’s training did not occur within Indian jurisdiction.
In December, the Federation of Indian Publishers and several prominent media organizations attempted to join the case, asserting that they were directly affected. They noted the existence of licensing agreements between OpenAI and several international publishers and emphasized the critical impact this legal battle could have on journalists’ livelihoods and the broader Indian news industry.
While OpenAI argues that chatbots do not substitute news subscriptions, the court has yet to allow these additional parties to formally enter the case. Still, the presiding judge has indicated that even if these groups can present arguments, focus will remain on ANI’s claims alone.
Globally, the attention on such lawsuits is mounting, as they promise to shed light on aspects of chatbot operations that have not faced significant scrutiny thus far. The data sources used to train these AI systems are particularly under the spotlight, with observers hoping that the legal proceedings in India will prompt a closer examination.
As governments worldwide grapple with the regulatory frameworks needed to govern artificial intelligence, India has signaled its intention to introduce regulations. In anticipation of the 2024 elections, India issued advisories against the launch of AI tools deemed “under-testing” or “unreliable” without government approval.
