Indian Copyright Act won't apply in dispute with ANI: OpenAI to Delhi HC

The company argued that LLM training uses lawful sources and said copying without violating Section 14 does not amount to infringement

ChatGPT parent OpenAI on Friday told the Delhi High Court that the court has to first decide whether the Indian Copyright Act will be applicable in the ongoing copyright infringement suit moved by Asian News International (ANI).

 

Giving the example of the Getty Images case in the United Kingdom (UK), counsel for the AI platform told the court that Getty Images, being the plaintiff, had told the UK court that there was no evidence that the training and development of a Large Language Model (LLM) took place in the UK and that such a claim has been abandoned.

 

“I make a copy without permission; it does not automatically become an infringing copy. It is not made in contravention of the provisions of this Act. We only access legitimate copies. It crawls on websites freely available. If there is no infringement under Section 14, I don’t need to invoke Section 52,” the counsel for OpenAI said.

 

The counsel pointed out that stealing from a bookshop can be an offence, but copyright says that if the use is transformative, then it is fair. The next date of hearing is December 12.

 

The Delhi High Court is hearing the case moved by ANI Media against OpenAI, in which the former has alleged that its content was illegally used to train LLMs and other artificial intelligence (AI) models. Apart from ANI, several other domestic news publishers and their representative associations, media houses, and music labels have sought to intervene in the case as petitioners.