Why Are India's Biggest Media Houses Against ChatGPT

India’s biggest news outlets want to join a lawsuit against Open AI, the US startup that created ChatGPT. These include more than 10 of India’s oldest media houses, including The Indian Express, The Hindu, India Today and Gautam Adani-owned NDTV.

The lawsuit these media houses want to join is the first of its kind in India. It was filed in November last year by Indian news agency Asian News International (ANI). ANI alleges that ChatGPT has used its copyrighted content without permission.

OpenAI has denied these allegations. It told the BBC that it only uses “publicly available data”, which is not illegal. ANI has sought Rs 2 crore in damages in this case and this is very important for ChatGPT as it is planning to expand in India.

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Why is India special for OpenAI?

According to a survey, India is already the market with the largest user base for ChatGPT. Chatbots like ChatGPT are trained on a large scale data set which is prepared by collecting content from the Internet.

There are about 450 news channels and 17 thousand newspapers in India, whose content can prove to be very useful for this technology.

However, it is not very clear what kind or which data ChatGPT can legally collect and use.

OpenAI is facing more than 10 lawsuits worldwide. These lawsuits include publishers, artists, media and news organizations. All of them allege that ChatGPT has used their content without permission.

The most famous case is related to ‘The New York Times’. In December 2023, the New York Times had demanded billions of dollars in damages from Open AI and its supporter Microsoft in a similar case.

Advocate Vibhav Mithal, an expert in artificial intelligence matters at the law firm ‘Anand & Anand’, says, “Any court’s decision can prove to be effective for other similar cases around the world.” Mithal says that the decision of the case filed by ANI can determine ‘how AI models will work in the future.’ It can also determine which copyrighted news content can be used to train AI generative models like ChatGPT.”

If the court’s decision comes in favor of ANI, it can increase the possibility of more lawsuits being filed. Also, AI companies may have to enter into license sharing agreements with content creators. ChatGPT has started doing this with some companies.

Mithal says, “But if the decision comes in favor of OpenAI, then the freedom to use copyrighted content to train AI models will increase.”

What is the whole case of ANI?

ANI provides news to its subscribers. These subscribers pay for it. ANI has exclusive copyrights of a large archive of text, photos and videos.

In its lawsuit filed in the Delhi High Court, ANI has alleged that OpenAI has trained ChatGPT by using its content without permission.

ANI says that this has increased the capabilities of the chatbot and OpenAI has directly benefited from it.

The news agency said that before filing the lawsuit, it had informed OpenAI that its content was being used illegally. It also told the company that if it wanted to use its content, it could take a license.

ANI says that OpenAI rejected this proposal and put the agency on its internal blocklist, so that its data cannot be collected anymore. Apart from this, OpenAI asked ANI to shut down some ‘web crawlers’ so that its content does not reach ChatGPT.

However, ANI claims that despite all these measures, ChatGPT is still taking content from its users’ websites. According to ANI, OpenAI is getting “unfair advantage” in this regard.

ANI has also claimed in its lawsuit that the chatbot presents its content as it is in response to some prompts (questions).

ANI says that in some cases ChatGPT also linked some statements to the news agency which were not from NI. They say that this has damaged the credibility of NI. The public was misled by this.

Apart from compensation for damages, ANI has also appealed to the court to direct OpenAI not to collect and use the content of the news agency.

In response, OpenAI says that it opposes the lawsuit filed in India because the company and its server are not in India. The chatbot has not been trained here.

What are other organisations saying?

In December, the Federation of Indian Publishers filed a petition in the court, saying it represents 80% of India’s publishers, including the Indian offices of Penguin Random House and Oxford University Press.

The organisation said the case “directly affects” them and should be allowed to present their arguments.

A month later, the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), which represents the country’s major news outlets, along with three other media outlets filed a similar petition. They argued that OpenAI had entered into licensing agreements with international news publishers such as the Associated Press and the Financial Times, but no such model had been adopted in India.

The DNPA told the court that the case involved the livelihood of journalists and the news industry across the country.

On the other hand, OpenAI has argued that chatbots cannot replace news subscriptions and cannot be used for these things.

So far the court has not accepted these petitions of the publishers and OpenAI has argued that the court should not accept them for hearing.

However, the judge has made it clear that even if these organizations are allowed to present their arguments, the court will be limited only to the claims of ANI, because these different parties have not filed their cases.

What is the status of artificial intelligence regulation in India?

Meanwhile, OpenAI told the BBC that it is doing “positive partnership and dialogue” with news organizations around the world, including India, so that “working together” can be done.

Experts say that such cases filed against ChatGPT around the world can bring to the fore such things related to chatbots, which have not been noticed till now.

Dr. Sivaramakrishnan R. Guruvayur, who researches the responsible use of artificial intelligence, says the data used to train chatbots is another such issue.

He says the ongoing case between ANI and OpenAI will give the court an opportunity to investigate the data sources of chatbots.

Governments around the world are looking at ways to regulate AI. In 2023, Italy banned ChatGPT, saying that the massive collection and storage of personal data by chatbots was raising privacy concerns.

Last year, the European Union approved a law to regulate ANI.

India has also hinted at plans to regulate AI. Ahead of the 2024 elections, the government issued an advisory stating that AI tools that are “under testing” or cannot be trusted will have to seek government permission before launching.

In addition, the government had prohibited AI tools from providing answers to questions on their platforms that are considered illegal in India or could “endanger the fairness of the electoral process”.

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