OpenAI attempts to exclude Indian media houses from copyright lawsuit
What's the story
OpenAI, the leading artificial intelligence (AI) firm, is trying to keep major Indian media houses out of a landmark copyright lawsuit. The legal battle could shape the future of AI regulations in India.
The companies looking to join the lawsuit include those owned by billionaires Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani.
Globally, similar cases are being heard where authors and news organizations accuse tech firms of using their copyrighted content without permission/license.
Legal position
OpenAI's legal stance and opposition to media involvement
The lawsuit was filed by ANI, a local news agency. Since then, many book publishers and digital media outlets have shown interest in becoming a party to the case against OpenAI.
However, the AI firm has sought dismissal of the case, claiming its ChatGPT service only shares public information.
OpenAI's lawyer Amit Sibal told the court he would oppose any media organization's attempts to join this lawsuit.
Defense strategy
OpenAI's defense and jurisdictional challenge
OpenAI has maintained that it only uses publicly available data in a fair use-protected manner.
In the ANI case, the company argued that Indian courts don't have jurisdiction over it since its servers are located outside India.
This was reiterated during a recent court hearing where Sibal, representing OpenAI, debated with opposing lawyers over media coverage of the lawsuit.
Media objection
OpenAI objects to media coverage of lawsuit
OpenAI has objected to media reports citing interviews and non-public court applications from book publishers and Indian news groups.
The company argued that "reliefs are being sought in two courts, this court and the public court."
Ameet Datta, representing the digital news group, called these allegations "really unfortunate."
This back-and-forth sheds light on the growing friction between OpenAI and Indian media over the copyright lawsuit.
Lawsuit expansion
Indian publishers and media outlets join lawsuit
The Federation of Indian Publishers (FIP), which represents publishers like Bloomsbury and Penguin Random House, has claimed that ChatGPT generates book summaries from unlicensed online copies, which hurts their business.
OpenAI denies this allegation.
Meanwhile, media groups, including the Indian Express and the Hindustan Times, have decided to join the lawsuit by claiming ChatGPT was scraping content from their news websites, to reproduce their work for its users.
Copyright concerns
Media outlets allege OpenAI's conduct threatens copyrights
Media outlets such as Adani's NDTV and Ambani's Network18 have also expressed their desire to join the lawsuit against OpenAI.
They fear ChatGPT is scraping their news websites to store and reproduce their work for its users.
A 135-page case filing in Delhi High Court argues that OpenAI's conduct poses "a clear and present danger to the valuable copyrights" of Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) members and other outlets.