Court battle between Indian media group, OpenAI set to begin next month

ISTANBUL

A court battle between an Indian media group and OpenAI is set to begin next month.

The Delhi High Court announced Tuesday that it will hold in-depth hearings starting on Feb. 21 on a copyright infringement case filed by the ANI media group against OpenAI.

Three other major news publishers - HT Digital Streams (Hindustan Times Group), IE Online Media Services Private Limited (Express Group), and NDTV Convergence - along with the industry body Digital News Publishers Association, have joined the case against OpenAI.

The lawsuit, filed by ANI last November, accuses OpenAI of copyright infringement.

ANI claims that OpenAI has used its copyrighted content to train its large language models without permission, and has filed the suit in the Delhi High Court.

The litigant alleges that its original news content is being “exploited for commercial gain” by OpenAI, marking the first copyright dispute involving OpenAI in India.

OpenAI had initially requested the court to rule on the issue of jurisdiction, but the judge rejected this request, the Hindustan Times reported.

OpenAI's defense argues that no legal action can be taken against ChatGPT, as its operations fall outside the jurisdiction of Indian law.

OpenAI is a US-based artificial intelligence research and deployment company, best known for developing ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that generates human-like responses to user queries.

The outcome of this case could have significant implications for OpenAI’s operations in India, which accounts for approximately 9.5%, or 28.5 million users, of ChatGPT’s 300 million weekly active users.