New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Friday refused to grant interim relief to Asian News International (ANI) in its copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, holding that the news agency failed to establish a prima facie case for an injunction against ChatGPT. Justice Amit Bansal observed that granting such relief at this stage could cause irreparable harm not only to OpenAI but also to the public interest.
While pronouncing the order, the court ruled that it has territorial jurisdiction to hear the case. The court, however, found on the first impression that the storage of ANI’s copyrighted content by OpenAI for training its AI models falls under the exceptions provided under Section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act. The court also noted that the answers provided by ChatGPT were not “substantially similar” to ANI’s original content and thus did not pose any copyright infringement under Section 51.
Justice Amit Bansal, in the single judgement, noted that ANI failed to establish that the AI has memorised and reproduced its own copyrighted material in a way that could justify an interim injunction. The court noted that there was no evidence, at this stage, that the responses of ChatGPT contained ‘memorisation or regurgitation’ of ANI’s original reports.
The judge continued that a broad prohibition against the company’s use would be “grave harm” to both it and the public while it awaits a hearing on the merits. A detailed judgement is yet to be issued.
In 2024 ANI filed a copyright infringement action against OpenAI, claiming OpenAI used its news originals without authorisation in a commercial capacity. The news agency alleged that ChatGPT was capable of generating pieces of its content and, in some cases, even falsely crediting invented quotes to ANI. The agency said that this “hallucination” by AI might harm its image and help to increase the misinformation.
OpenAI filed a lawsuit against the company, stating that its AI models are trained and served outside of India and that the servers are situated in the USA. The company also said that its AI training method is revolutionary, information cannot be copyrighted and publishers can opt out of having their information scraped by putting it on a block list.
In the ongoing proceedings, Professor Dr Arul George Scaria, a faculty member at the National Law School of India University, appeared as amicus curiae and said that the Delhi High Court has jurisdiction to hear the matter. He said that while most of the way that OpenAI used ANI’s content was non-expressive, that amounts to a typical example of non-infringement. He also pointed out that there are some exceptions to copyright law with respect to expressions.
Advocate Adarsh Ramanujan was another amicus curiae that helped the court during the proceedings. Indian courts’ stance on AI training, copyright protection and news content use by generative AI platforms could be influenced by the case, and it is projected to become a defining case in India regarding copyright and AI. The detailed order from Delhi High Court is awaited.
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Pragya is a Science and Technology reporter, has Master degree in Journalism, covering a range of stories including space, gadgets and how tech is transforming our lives. She has 4+ years of industry experience in Digital Media and Content Writing. 15+ years of practice in yoga philosophy to every day, and that’s one way she strive to build meaningful experiences.