The Delhi High Court on Friday refused to grant interim relief to ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. in its copyright infringement case against artificial intelligence company OpenAI, holding that the company's use of ANI's content to train ChatGPT does not, at this stage, amount to copyright infringement.
Justice Amit Bansal observed that OpenAI's storage and use of ANI's literary works for training its large language model falls within the scope of "fair dealing" under Section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act, 1957. The provision exempts certain uses of copyrighted material, including research and private use, from constituting infringement.
The court further held that ANI had failed to establish a prima facie case that ChatGPT reproduced or retrieved its original literary works in responses generated by the chatbot. It also found that the balance of convenience did not favour granting an interim injunction, observing that such an order could cause irreparable harm not only to OpenAI but also to the wider public.
ANI had alleged that OpenAI unlawfully used its copyrighted news reports to train ChatGPT and argued that the chatbot could falsely attribute political news to the agency, potentially contributing to misinformation.
The case has attracted interventions from several publishing and media bodies, including the Federation of Indian Publishers, the Digital News Publishers Association and the Indian Music Industry, which have raised concerns over the alleged unauthorised use of copyrighted books, news content and sound recordings for AI training.
OpenAI denied wrongdoing, maintaining that it had not improperly accessed any copyrighted data and argued that ChatGPT's training takes place outside India, where it has no servers.
