News agency ANI sues OpenAI for alleged violation of intellectual property rights

The news agency ANI has sued OpenAI for using its “original news content” in an unauthorised manner, possibly becoming the first Indian publisher to drag an AI company to court for violating its intellectual property rights. The suit is scheduled to be heard by justice Amit Bansal in the Delhi high court on Tuesday.
In its suit, ANI has alleged that OpenAI has “exploited” its content for commercial gain in two ways. First, OpenAI has used ANI’s content to train its large language models (LLMs). Second, OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT produces ANI’s content verbatim in response to queries by users.
The suit also alleges that OpenAI has accredited statements and news – that never occurred – to ANI. ANI has argued that such “hallucinations” pose “a real threat to ANI’s reputation” and can lead to spread of fake news that can cause public disorder.
The lawsuit has been filed by Delhi-based Unum Law on behalf of ANI. Unum Law is run by Sidhant Kumar, the son of Navika Kumar, the group editor of Times Network Group.
HT has reached out to OpenAI for comment.
The use of copyrighted material to train LLMs is a legally fraught matter globally.
Multiple news publications across the world, most notably New York Times, have sued OpenAI and other AI firms including Microsoft and Perplexity for violating their copyright by using the publishers’ to train their chatbots and then subsequently competing with them. In India, the family of late singer SP Balasubrahmanyam had sent a legal notice to the makers of Telugu film Keedaa Cola for using AI to recreate the singer’s voice without the family’s consent.
On National Press Day on November 16, Union information and broadcasting minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had flagged the threat posed by AI to the intellectual property of content creators, including news publishers. He had said that original content was being ingested by AI models and needed to be safeguarded. “This is not just an economic issue; it is an ethical issue also,” he had said.