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Informist, Friday, Jul. 24, 2026

 

--HC on ANI plea: OpenAI act of training ChatGPT not copyright infringement 

--CONTEXT: HC order on ANI's copyright infringement suit against OpenAI 

--HC on ANI plea: Output generated by ChatGPT not copyright infringement 

--HC rejects ANI's interim injunction plea against OpenAI in copyright case

 

NEW DELHI – In the country's first copyright infringement case against artificial intelligence research organisation OpenAI, the Delhi High Court Friday ruled that the act of the company training its generative AI chatbot ChatGPT with ANI Media Pvt. Ltd.'s material does not amount to copyright infringement. The output generated by ChatGPT after using such material also does not amount to copyright infringement, as it is not similar to ANI Media, the court said. The order has wide ramifications in the entire media industry where OpenAI uses material from different news, publishers and music organisations to train ChatGPT, which uses large language models to process natural language, allowing one to converse with it, ask questions, write code, generate images and musice, and automate tasks in a human-like manner.

 

Justice Amit Bansal said that OpenAI's act of storing ANI Media's literary works for training large language model falls under Section 52(1)(a) of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957 and so, does not amount to infringement. Section 52(1)(a) of the Indian Copyright Act states that fair dealing with any work, except a computer programme, does not break copyright law if used for private or personal use, including research, criticism or review, and reporting current events or public lectures. 

 

ANI Media has failed to satisfy that in the responses generated by ChatGPT, any retrieving of the media company's original literary response has happened, said Justice Bansal. ANI Media has failed to make out a case for prima facie grant of interim injunction, he said. The balance of convenience is also against grant of interim injunction, he said. Irreparable injury would be caused not only to OpenAI but also to the public at large if an interim injunction is granted, he said. The court rejected ANI Media's plea seeking an interim injunction against OpenAI for training ChatGPT with material that had the news organisation's copyright.  

 

ANI Media had argued that OpenAI was training ChatGPT with the media company's copyright material. "The software is provided with data to train its large language model. It stores my content and makes it available online," said ANI Media. ChatGPT falsely attributes ANI for political news, the company said, adding that this could lead to spreading of fake news, having the propensity to cause public disorder. 

 

The Federation of Indian Publishers and the Digital News Publishers Association had sought to intervene in the copyright infringement suit. The federation said ChatGPT produces book summaries and extracts from unlicensed online copies, which hurts the business of its members. OpenAI has used its members' literary works without authorisation to train ChatGPT, the federation said. The Digital News Publishers Association, which represents the digital arms of several mainstream television and print organisations in India, has highlighted concerns about the unauthorised mass copying and use of copyrighted works to train AI models, including OpenAI's Generative Pre-trained Transformer model. 

 

The Indian Music Industry group, which includes Saregama India Ltd. and T-Series, has also sought to intervene in the copyright infringement suit filed against the California-based company. The music group and companies had moved the high court to hear its concerns about unauthorised use of sound recordings in training AI models that breaches their copyright 

 

OpenAI said it had not accessed anyone's data wrongly. No cause of action arose in India against ChatGPT since training does not happen in India and there are no servers here, OpenAI said.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Avishek Dutta

 

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