Digital news units of Indian billionaires Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani, and other outlets including the Indian Express and the Hindustan Times, are joining proceedings against OpenAI for improperly using copyright content, legal papers show.
The Indian media outlets, including Adani’s NDTV and Ambani’s Network18, have told a New Delhi court they want to join an ongoing lawsuit against the ChatGPT creator as they are worried their news Web sites are being scraped to store and reproduce their work for users of the powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tool.
In the most high-profile battle, local news agency ANI was the first to file a lawsuit against OpenAI last year. Global and Indian book publishers joined on Friday.
Photo: Reuters
The 135-page case filing, which is not public, but was reviewed by Reuters, argues OpenAI’s conduct constitutes “a clear and present danger to the valuable copyrights” of Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) members and other outlets.
It refers to OpenAI’s “willful scraping ... and adaptation of content,” adding that “the disproportionate power of tech companies in prioritizing content and extracting advertising revenue has raised concerns among publishers.”
The filing was made by the Indian Express, Hindustan Times, Adani’s NDTV and the DNPA, which represents about 20 companies including Mukesh Ambani Network18 and players like Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar, Zee News, India Today Group and The Hindu. Many of these outlets have a flourishing newspaper and television news business too.
The Times of India is not part of the legal challenge despite being a member of the DNPA, the filing said, without elaborating on the reasons.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment on the allegations made by the Indian news outlets. It has repeatedly denied such allegations, saying its AI systems make fair use of publicly available data.
In the US, the New York Times sued OpenAI and its largest financial backer Microsoft Corp in December 2023, accusing them of using millions of its articles without permission to train chatbots to provide information to users.
The new Indian intervention would add firepower to ANI’s lawsuit against OpenAI in India’s most high-profile legal proceedings on the issue.
A hearing in ANI’s lawsuit against OpenAI is scheduled for today.
Responding to the ANI case, OpenAI last week said that any order to delete training data would result in a violation of its US legal obligations, and Indian judges have no jurisdiction to hear a copyright case against the company as its servers are located abroad.
Reuters, which holds a 26 percent interest in ANI, has said it is not involved in ANI’s business practices or operations.
In recent months, OpenAI has signed deals with Time magazine, the Financial Times, Business Insider-owner Axel Springer, France’s Le Monde and Spain’s Prisa Media to display content.
The Indian publishers in their new filing argue that OpenAI has entered into partnership agreements with media outlets abroad, but has not entered into similar deals in India, hurting the media companies.
Such conduct by OpenAI “in India betrays an inexplicable defiance of the law,” the Indian media outlets’ filing said.
As OpenAI is set to become a profit-driven business benefiting from the creative works of the media industry, it would result in a “weakened press” and would not be in the best interests of a vibrant democracy, their filing said.
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