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Digital news entities owned by Indian magnates Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani, alongside other major media houses like the Indian Express and Hindustan Times, have entered into a copyright dispute with OpenAI.

These organizations are accusing OpenAI of improperly utilizing their copyrighted material to train its AI systems, including the widely-used ChatGPT.

The case, escalating tensions in the realm of AI content usage, has been filed in a New Delhi court, where these Indian media outlets have expressed concerns over their content being "scraped" and used without their consent.

Reuters initially broke the news of this filing, highlighting it as an extension of a broader legal battle against OpenAI in India, where ANI, a local news agency, had previously initiated action.

The lawsuit document, which spans 135 pages and has been reviewed by Reuters despite not being publicly available, labels OpenAI’s actions as a "clear and present danger" to the copyrights of members of the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) and others.

The document specifically criticizes OpenAI for the "wilful scraping and adaptation of content" and points out the tech giant's advantage in content prioritization and ad revenue, which has alarmed the publishers.

The legal action involves key players like NDTV (owned by Adani), Network18 (owned by Ambani), and several other influential media firms under the DNPA umbrella such as Dainik Bhaskar, Zee News, and the India Today Group.

Notably, the Times of India, also a DNPA member, is not part of this legal challenge, though reasons for this omission remain undisclosed.

OpenAI has yet to comment on these specific accusations from the Indian firms but has generally defended its practices by claiming its AI training adheres to the principles of fair use of public data.

This Indian lawsuit follows similar legal challenges in the West, with the New York Times having sued both OpenAI and Microsoft late last year over unauthorized use of its articles for AI training.

The involvement of these Indian publishers in the legal fray is expected to intensify the scrutiny on OpenAI's practices in India.

A court hearing related to ANI’s case against OpenAI is slated for this Tuesday. In response to previous legal actions, OpenAI has argued that any mandate to delete training data could contravene its obligations under U.S. law and that Indian courts might not have jurisdiction over the matter due to the location of its servers outside India.

Reuters, which has a 26% stake in ANI, has clarified it has no role in ANI’s operational or business decisions.

Moreover, while OpenAI has secured content deals with international media like Time magazine and the Financial Times, the Indian publishers lament the absence of similar arrangements in India, accusing OpenAI of legal defiance.

They argue that this could lead to a weakened press, undermining democracy by turning OpenAI into a profit-driven entity that benefits from the media industry's creative output.

This legal confrontation comes at a time when OpenAI is riding high on the wave of generative AI popularity post-ChatGPT's launch in November 2022, aiming to maintain its lead in the AI sector after securing $6.6 billion in funding last year.

The company's strategic hires in India, like former WhatsApp executive Pragya Misra, reflect its intent to expand in this burgeoning market driven by an increasing number of internet users due to affordable mobile data.

This case not only highlights the growing pains of AI technology intersecting with traditional media but also underscores the urgent need for clearer legal frameworks governing AI and copyright in one of the world's largest democracies.

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