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Openai boss Sam Altman was in Delhi on Wednesday and said India was a major market for his business
The largest press organizations in India seek to join a lawsuit against Openai, the American startup behind Chatgpt, for alleged unauthorized use of their content.
Press organizations include some of India’s oldest publications such as Indian Express, Hindu, India TODAY group, billionaire Gautam Adani NDTV and more than a dozen others.
Openai denies allegations and told BBC that it uses “data accessible to the public” in accordance with “largely accepted legal”.
On Wednesday, the CEO of Openai, Sam Altman, was in Delhi to discuss India’s plan for a low -cost AI ecosystem with IT Minister Ashwini Vahnaw.
He declared that India “should be one of the leaders of the AI revolution” and said that previous comments of 2023, when he declared that Indian companies would have trouble competing, had been outings of its context.
“India is an incredibly important market for AI in general and for Openai in particular,” said local media, said at the event.
The judicial case filed against Openai in November by Asian News International (Ani), the largest press agency in India, is the first of its kind in India.
Aniors Chatgpt of illegally using its material protected by copyright – which opened – and requests damages of 20 million rupees ($ 230,000; £ 185,000).
The case is important for Chatgpt given its plans to develop in the country. According to an survey, India already has the largest basic user base.
Chatbots like Chatgpt are formed on massive data sets collected by crawling on the Internet. The content produced by nearly 450 news channels and 17,000 newspapers in India has enormous potential for this.
However, there is no clarity on the material that Chatgpt can legally collect and use for this purpose.
OPENAI is faced with at least a dozen lawsuits worldwide deposited by publishers, artists and press organizations, all of which accused Chatgpt of using their content without authorization.
The most important of them was deposited by the New York Times in December 2023, in which the newspaper demanded “billions of dollars” in damages of Openai and Microsoft, its contributor.
“A decision of any court would also hold a persuasive value for other similar cases around the world,” explains Vibhav Mithal, a lawyer specializing in artificial intelligence of the Indian law firm Anand and Anand.
Mithal said that the verdict in the trial brought by Ani could “define how these AI models will work in the future” and “what news content protected by copyright can be used to train Generative AI models (like Chatgpt) “.
A court decision in favor of an ENGI could trigger new legal affairs as well as the opening of the possibility that IA companies conclude license sharing agreements with content creators, which some companies already have started to do.
“But a decision in favor of Openai will lead to greater freedom to use protected data protected by copyright to train AI models,” he said.
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The content produced by nearly 450 information channels and 17,000 newspapers in India has enormous potential for chatgpt
What is the case of Ani?
Ani provides news to her paid subscribers and has exclusive copyright on a large text, images and videos archive.
In its pursuit deposited before the High Court of Delhi, Ani declared that Optai used its content to form the Chatppt without authorization. Ani argued that it led the chatbot to improve and took advantage of Openai.
The news agency said that before the complaint was filled up, he had told Openai that its content was used illegally and had proposed to grant a license to use its data.
Ani says that Optai refused the offer and put the news agency on a list of internal blocks so that its data is no longer collected. He also asked Ani to deactivate certain web robots to ensure that its content has not been taken up by Chatgpt.
The news agency says that despite these measures, Chatgpt resumes its content on the websites of its subscribers. It enriched Openai “unjustly”, he says.
Ani also says in her costume that the chatbot produces its content that is quickly for certain prompts. In some cases, says Ani, Chatgpt falsely attributed declarations to the news agency, hampering its credibility and deceiving the public.
In addition to requesting compensation for damages, Ani asked the Imence Openai court to stop storing and using her work.
In her response, Openai said she opposed the deposit of the case in India since the company and its servers are not located in the country and that the chatbot was not trained there either.
Press organizations seek to join a lawsuit
In December, the Federation of Indian publishers, which claims to represent 80% of Indian publishers, including the Indian offices of Penguin Random House and Oxford University Press, filed a request in court saying that they were “directly assigned” By this case and should be allowed to also present their arguments.
A month later, Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), which represents the main Indian media, and three other media have filed a similar demand. They argued that even if Openai had concluded license agreements with international information publishers such as the Associated Press and the Financial Times, a similar model had not been followed in India.
The DNPA declared in court that the case would affect the means of subsistence of journalists and the country’s news industry. OPENAI, however, argued that chatbots are not a “substitute” by news subscriptions and are not used for such purposes.
The court has not yet admitted these requests by the publishers and Openai argued that the court should not hear them.
But the judge specified that even if these associations are authorized to discuss, the court will be limited to the complaints of Ani, because the other parties had not filed their own proceedings.
Meanwhile, Openai told the BBC that he gave himself to “constructive partnerships and conversations” with press organizations around the world, including India, to “work in collaboration”.
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Digital News Publishers Association claims that the case would affect the means of subsistence of journalists and the country’s news industry
Where is AI regulation in India
Analysts claim that the prosecutions deposited against Chatgpt around the world could set up aspects of chatbots that have escaped so far.
Dr. Sivaramakrishnan R Guruvayur, whose research focuses on responsible use of artificial intelligence, says that the data used to form chatbots is such as aspect.
The Ani-Openai case will lead the court “to assess the sources of data” of chatbots, he said.
Governments around the world have faced the way to regulate AI. In 2023, Italy blocked Chatgpt saying that the mass collection of the chatbot and the storage of personal data brought up confidentiality problems.
The European Union approved a law to regulate AI last year.
The Indian government has also indicated plans to regulate AI. Before the 2024 elections, the government issued an opinion that the IA tools which “underestimate” or “unreliable” should obtain permission from the government before the launch.
He also asked AI tools not to generate illegal answers in India or “threaten the integrity of the electoral process”.
