OpenAI pushes back against Indian media groups in copyright lawsuit

OpenAI is attempting to block Indian media houses, including those owned by business tycoons Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani, from joining a copyright lawsuit against the company. The Microsoft-backed AI firm argues that it does not use their content to train its AI models, including ChatGPT, according to a legal filing seen by Reuters.

The 31-page court filing, submitted on February 11, comes in response to a lawsuit originally filed by Indian news agency ANI last year, which accused OpenAI of using its published content without permission to train its artificial intelligence models. Since then, multiple Indian media houses and book publishers have joined the legal proceedings, raising concerns about content scraping and copyright violations.

Some of India’s largest media houses, including Adani’s 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.

However, OpenAI has strongly denied these claims in its court filing, stating that it has not used any content from these media groups to train its AI models. The company also asserts that it is not obligated to enter into partnership deals with Indian media outlets simply to use content that is publicly available online.

OpenAI maintains that it builds AI models using publicly available data in compliance with fair use principles and long-standing legal precedents.

The company has entered into content licensing agreements with publishers in other countries, but the Indian media groups argue that no such partnerships have been formed in India. OpenAI counters that its global licensing arrangements are not specifically for AI training, and it claims that Indian copyright law permits the use of publicly available content.

Courts worldwide are currently grappling with lawsuits from authors, news publishers, and musicians who argue that technology firms are training AI models using copyrighted content without permission or compensation.

The legal battle comes just days after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman visited India as part of his Asian tour, during which he met IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in New Delhi. Discussions reportedly focused on India’s plans to develop a low-cost AI ecosystem, reflecting the country’s ambitions in the global AI race.