OpenAI asks Indian court to throw out book publishers challenge in copyright battle

OpenAI asks Indian court to throw out book publishers challenge in copyright battle

By Arpan Chaturvedi and Aditya Kalra January 28, 2025

• Summary
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• OpenAI filing says publishers body's case should be dismissed
• OpenAI denies using original literary work in training its large language model

NEW DELHI, Jan 28 (Reuters) - OpenAI has asked an Indian court to quash a plea by a group representing Indian and global book publishers that accuse it of copyright breaches, arguing its ChatGPT service only disseminates public information, legal papers show.

The case, which began with legal action last year by local news agency ANI, will be heard in New Delhi on Tuesday. It has the potential to shape the legal framework for artificial intelligence in India - OpenAI's second-largest market by number of users.

In recent weeks, book publishers and almost a dozen digital media outlets, including those owned by billionaires Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani, have joined the case to challenge the AI giant.

The Federation of Indian Publishers, which represents many Indian firms and likes of Bloomsbury (BLPU.L), opens new tab and Penguin Random House, has argued ChatGPT produces book summaries and extracts from unlicensed online copies, hurting their business.

OpenAI countered that the information was drawn from platforms like Wikipedia or abstracts, summaries, tables of content made publicly available on the websites of the publishers in question, according to a Jan. 26 non-public court filing seen by Reuters.

"Web-crawlers are designed to only access publically available data," OpenAI said in its 21-page response to the book publishers's argument.

The book publishers have "entirely failed to demonstrate even a single instance" that OpenAI services are trained on "original literary work," it said.

Pranav Gupta, secretary of the federation, told Reuters that most book-related content being shown by ChatGPT was scraped from websites that have licensing arrangements with book publishers.

OpenAI maintains it only uses publicly available data in a manner protected by fair use principles. Asked for comment on Tuesday, it referred Reuters to its earlier statements and the court filing challenging the book publishers.

OpenAI has also said, in its initial response to the ANI case, that Indian judges have no jurisdiction to hear a case against it as its servers are located abroad.

The case is one of many that is being heard globally in which authors, news organisations and musicians have accused technology firms of using their copyrighted work to train AI services without permission or license.⍐