OpenAI trying to contain major media copyright suit in India
The suit was initially launched by a local Indian news agency, which argued that AI poses "a clear and present danger to the valuable copyrights."
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The war against AI (or for, depending on where you stand) is global. We saw that in a major way this week with the stock market’s meltdown over Chinese chatbot DeepSeek. Now, OpenAI is looking to shore up its footing in India—the company’s second-largest market outside the US—in the face of ongoing copyright lawsuits from news agencies, media companies, and book publishers.
This week, OpenAI sought to block major Indian media companies owned by billionaires Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani from joining a copyright lawsuit that has the potential to set a precedent around fair use in the country, per Reuters. Indian courts are currently hearing cases from musicians, artists, book publishers, news organizations, and more who claim that their proprietary material was used without license or permission.
This is the same tune we’ve been hearing in this country, as more creators and large-scale businesses stand up against the tool’s regurgitation of the work of actual humans. The Indian lawsuit was first launched last year by local news agency ANI, which wrote, per Reuters, that OpenAI poses “a clear and present danger to the valuable copyrights” in a 135-page filing. The suit referenced the chatbot’s “wilful scraping… and adaptation of content,” adding that “the disproportionate power of tech companies in prioritising content and extracting advertising revenue has raised concerns among publishers.”
“I have an objection, I wish to file a reply,” OpenAI lawyer Amit Sibal told the court today, referring to Adani and Ambani’s intention to join the suit. The case will be heard next Friday.
OpenAI maintains that it only sources publicly available data, but The Federation of Indian Publishers (which represents outlets like Bloomsbury and Penguin Random House, in addition to a multitude of Indian companies) is arguing that AI generates book summaries and analyses based on unlicensed online copies, which hurts its business. It’s hard to know which way this one is going to go, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that anyone seeking to maintain ownership over their own work has a long journey ahead of them.