No copyright in news that is freely available, OpenAI tells Delhi HC

Ai company Open AI on Tuesday pushed back against news agency ANI’s allegations that the company was violating its undertaking regarding the use of the latter’s content to train its ChatGPT software, asserting that the same was being used for search, which was different from training. In November, OpenAI had submitted before the Delhi high court that it had already blocklisted ANI’s domain in October, to prevent the use of new agency’s content by its AI chatbot. Open AI represented by senior advocate Amit Sibal submitted before a bench of justice Amit Bansal that using ANI’s content for search did not amount to infringement, since the results did not “reproduce” ANI’s material. This was after ANI represented by advocate Siddhant Kumar urged the high court to pass a favourable ruling in its copyright infringement suit filed against OpenAI, asserting that the company despite its undertaking was scraping content shared on its subscribers website, to train its ChatGPT software and generate responses. In November, the high court issued summons to OpenAI but refrained from immediately restraining it from using ANI’s content after the company informed the court that it had already blacklisted ANI’s domain in October to prevent further use of its news.