The Delhi High Court hearing on Asian News International's (ANI) appeal against OpenAI has been rescheduled to September 14, according to latest reports. The hearing was earlier postponed after the Division Bench scheduled to take up the matter did not assemble on Tuesday, September 8. The Bench is headed by Justice V Kameswar Rao, who has since been appointed Chief Justice of the Patna High Court. As reported by Business Standard, this represents the first lawsuit in India against ChatGPT, with the case titled ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v. OpenAI Inc & Anr.
ANI has sued OpenAI, alleging that its news reports and other original content were being used by the AI company for commercial purposes without permission. As reported by Business Standard, the news agency claimed that ChatGPT could reproduce its reports substantially verbatim when users sought information and, in some instances, attributed statements or news developments to ANI that, according to the agency, had never been published. The agency alleged that ChatGPT verbatim reproduces ANI's original content in response to users' queries on a real-time basis, with the suit claiming that ChatGPT has been accrediting ANI with statements and news that never occurred. The dispute is significant because it concerns the use of copyrighted news material to develop and operate large language models, as well as the extent to which AI systems can reproduce that material in responses to users.
The single judge, while refusing ANI's request for an interim injunction, had held that OpenAI's storage of ANI's copyrighted works did not, by itself, constitute infringement under the Copyright Act, 1957, as reported by Business Standard. The court had also considered OpenAI's research-related defence, observing that training the large language models powering ChatGPT involves machine learning based on stored literary works, including processes of screening and organising such material. Justice Amit Bansal's July 24 order ruled that OpenAI's storage of ANI's original works for training the large language models underlying ChatGPT, fell under the fair-dealing exception of the Copyright Act. The court had also said ANI had failed to establish that ChatGPT had memorised or reproduced its news reports in responses to users. The current appeal challenges this ruling, with ANI likely to argue that its original news reports are being used to train AI models for commercial gain, which shouldn't be protected as fair dealing.
OpenAI had questioned the maintainability of the proceedings in India, pointing out that its AI models were not trained in India and that its servers are located in the United States. According to Business Standard, the company also argued that the use of copyrighted material in machine learning constitutes a transformative process and that copyright protection does not extend to underlying news facts. OpenAI further submitted that publishers who do not want their material accessed can seek to have their websites placed on a blocklist. The company, founded by Elon Musk in 2015 and headquartered in California, had countered ANI's claims by asserting that its machine learning process is transformative and that outlets can request to be placed on a blocklist if they do not wish to be crawled. These arguments put the dispute at the intersection of copyright law, AI training practices and the territorial reach of Indian courts.
In November 2024, ANI had sued OpenAI for allegedly using its copyrighted content without permission or payment to train ChatGPT. The news agency is seeking ₹2 crore in damages and an order restraining OpenAI from using its work. Meanwhile, the media landscape shows contrasting approaches to AI integration, with Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd (BCCL) partnering with OpenAI to help readers discover journalism from BCCL publications through ChatGPT, while strengthening attribution and access to original reporting. Under this partnership, content from participating BCCL publications such as The Times of India and The Economic Times will be surfaced in ChatGPT when relevant to user queries. The September 14 hearing could therefore provide an important next step in the wider debate over how Indian copyright law applies to generative AI systems and the news material used by them.
