In a first for Indian media, one of the country’s largest news agencies has sued OpenAI for using its content to train AI models without permission.

The lawsuit also states that the AI company has generated false information that was attributed back to Asian News International (ANI).

In what could become the first of many cases in the country, this lawsuit reflects a wider wrangle between news outlets – and indeed other content creators too – who want recompense for OpenAI using their content; while the AI pioneer claims it simply can’t afford to do this.

What Is the Issue?

The lawsuit hinges upon the idea that copyrighted material – content from the news organization – was used by OpenAI illegally.

In a 287-page lawsuit filed at the Delhi High Court, ANI not only attacked OpenAI for copyright abuse, but also said its reputation had been damaged by AI-fabricated material. The company’s lawyer, Sidhant Kumar, said that fabricated interviews had appeared online attributed to the news organization. These included “a non-existent conversation with Rahul Gandhi, who leads the opposing party to the current party in power,” says TechCrunch.

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Kumar added that hallucinations like these could have a long-term impact of ANI’s reputation and could even lead to public disorder if fake content is taken to be the real, something that has already played out in many countries.

OpenAI Claims Innocence

The AI pioneer is claiming that ChatGPT has not been accessing the ANI website. However, Justice Amit Bansal has issued it with a summons and the next hearing is scheduled for January.

“We take great care in our products and design process to support news organizations. We are actively engaged in constructive partnerships and conversations with many news organizations around the world, including India, to explore opportunities, listen to feedback, and work collaboratively.” – OpenAI spokesperson

One Case Among Many

OpenAI is fighting more than one copyright case at the moment. In the US, author and comedian Sarah Silverman is leading one lawsuit for copyright infringement. She and her co-plaintiffs are accusing OpenAI of using AI to summarize their copyrighted works without permission. Books by Chris Golden (Ararat) and Richard Kadrey (Sandman Slim) are also named in the lawsuit.

There is also a $3 billion class action lawsuit from a group of anonymous individuals. They claim that the “secret scraping” of data conducted to train ChatGPT models is “data theft.”

The contention around what content can be used to train AI models is being debated around the globe. In the UK, OpenAI put in a testimony to the British Parliament’s House of Lords’ communications and digital committee. It said that it would simply not be able to function if it could not access copyrighted material. As the evidence filing puts it:

“Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression — including blog posts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents – it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials.”

However, this argument doesn’t pull at the heart strings of content creators who want recognition for their craft and the promise that their content will not be misused. OpenAI cannot give this at the moment nor seems willing to cough up for the privilege of using materials it doesn’t own.

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