In Big Win For OpenAI, High Court Rules In Its Favour In Copyright Dispute

The Delhi High Court on Friday held that OpenAI's use of news agency ANI's published content to train the artificial intelligence models underlying ChatGPT does not, at this stage, amount to copyright infringement, marking a significant development in India's first major AI copyright dispute.

Refusing ANI's plea for an interim injunction, Justice Amit Bansal said that using copyrighted material to train large language models (LLMs) falls within the fair dealing exemption for research under the Copyright Act.

The court also observed that ANI had failed to establish that ChatGPT had memorised or reproduced its news reports in responses generated for users.

ANI had filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in the Delhi High Court in November 2024, alleging that the US-based company used its published content without permission to train its AI models and that ChatGPT attributed fabricated stories to the news agency.

While declining to grant interim relief on the copyright claims, the court held that the storage of ANI's articles for training AI models is protected under the research exception in India's Copyright Act.

However, the court ruled in ANI's favour on the issue of jurisdiction, holding that the suit is maintainable before the Delhi High Court. The court found no prima facie evidence to suggest that ChatGPT reproduced ANI's copyrighted material.

The ruling is the first substantive judicial finding in India on whether AI companies can use copyrighted news content to train large language models without obtaining a licence. Similar copyright lawsuits against OpenAI are also pending in the United States and Canada.