The Indian government has established a committee to assess the adequacy of current copyright legislation in addressing disputes related to artificial intelligence (AI). This move comes amid ongoing legal issues faced by OpenAI, which has been accused of misusing copyrighted materials.
A lawsuit currently pending in the Delhi High Court involves several prominent Indian news organizations and book publishers that allege OpenAI employs their content without authorization to enhance its ChatGPT chatbot. This case has the potential to significantly affect how copyright law is interpreted and enforced in the country.
OpenAI has rejected these allegations, asserting that they adhere to copyright regulations.
An internal memorandum, which has not been disclosed to the public, indicates that the Ministry of Commerce appointed an eight-member panel last month to investigate the intersection of AI issues and copyright law within India.
The panel is charged with identifying and analyzing the legal and policy challenges that arise from AI use in the context of copyright, as detailed in the memorandum.
Comprising intellectual property specialists, government representatives, and industry leaders, the committee will also evaluate whether the Copyright Act of 1957 adequately addresses these challenges and will provide recommendations to the government.
Requests for comments from India’s commerce and information technology ministries went unanswered by Reuters.
The ongoing legal battles concerning copyright in India predominantly involve OpenAI’s practices.
Major entities such as NDTV, owned by billionaire Gautam Adani, along with the Indian Express, Hindustan Times, and the Digital News Publishers Association—representing various leading news outlets—have expressed concerns regarding the violation of copyright laws by AI platforms utilizing their data for training.
OpenAI maintains that it only uses publicly available information for training its chatbot, asserting that this does not infringe upon India’s copyright laws. Furthermore, the company offers an option for websites that prefer to opt out of having their data utilized.
Legal disputes regarding copyright infringement in the context of AI training are also being examined in courts worldwide, where authors, media companies, and musicians allege that tech firms are incorporating their copyrighted works without consent or compensation.
© Thomson Reuters 2025
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
