Why T-Series, Saregama, Sony want to join a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI in India

Legal challenges are mounting for artificial intelligence firm OpenAI in India, its second largest market by users. According to latest reports, India's leading music labels, including the likes of T-Series, Saregama and Sony, are seeking to join a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI in New Delhi. The companies have alleged that OpenAI has improperly used their sound recordings to train AI models, Reuters reported. 

The music labels are attempting to join the copyright infringement case against OpenAI filed by news agency ANI. 

On Thursday, the Indian Music Industry (IMI) group, T-Series and Saregama India asked a Delhi court to hear concerns about "unauthorised use of sound recordings" in training AI models that breaches their copyright. Their contentions "are crucial for the entire music industry in India, and even worldwide," they said in their filing.

What is the lawsuit?

ANI, which filed the lawsuit last year, accused OpenAI's ChatGPT of using its content without permission to train AI models. The Delhi High Court's single-judge bench of Justice Amit Bansal, on November 18 last year, appointed academic Arul George Scaria and lawyer Adarsh Ramanajun as amicus curiae to assist it in the ANI’s copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI.

A few days ago, media houses such as Adani-backed NDTV, The Indian Express, Hindustan Times, and the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), which represents multiple news outlets including Ambani’s Network18, have alleged that OpenAI is scraping their content to reproduce it on ChatGPT.

The music labels' concerns followed that. The labels are "concerned OpenAI and other AI systems can extract lyrics, music compositions and sound recordings from the internet," Reuters cited an industry source as saying.

OpenAI's response

Microsoft-backed OpenAI has defended its use of publicly available data, claiming it adheres to fair-use principles.
Strongly denying the allegations, the ChatGPT maker stated in a court filing that it has not used any content from the media groups to train its AI models. Further, it asserted that the company is not obligated to enter into partnership deals with Indian media outlets to use what is publicly available online.

It opposed the ANI lawsuit on the grounds that Indian courts lack jurisdiction, as the company is US-based, with servers abroad. The Delhi HC will assess the case against the Copyright Act, 1957.

Similar cases 

OpenAI has run into legal troubles not only in India but across the world. GEMA, an association of composers, lyricists and publishers in Germany said in November that it had sued OpenAI for ChatGPT's alleged unlicensed reproduction of song lyrics with which "the system has obviously been trained".
 

-With Reuters inputs