OpenAI Faces Copyright Lawsuit in India With Potential Global Implications

A copyright lawsuit filed against OpenAI by one of the country's largest news agencies could have implications for the future of artificial intelligence in India.

NEW DELHI -- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman visits India this week as his company fights off a major copyright lawsuit in its second-largest market -- yet another legal headache for the creator of ChatGPT as it seeks to cement itself as the global leader in artificial intelligence.

The lawsuit is led by one of the country's largest news wires and has united players across a diverse, often fragmented Indian media landscape. Mirroring similar legal challenges facing the company worldwide, the suit alleges that OpenAI has illegally used copyrighted content to train the algorithms that power its popular chatbots.

"If the Indian court becomes one of the first courts to decide on this issue, it could be a trendsetter," said Aditya Gupta, an expert in Indian copyright law. "The size of the Indian market is impossible for OpenAI to ignore. They can't just say, 'I'll exit India; it doesn't matter.'

OpenAI has argued in court that India lacks jurisdiction over the issue. "We are actively engaged in constructive partnerships and conversations with many news organizations around the world, including India, to explore opportunities, listen to feedback, and work collaboratively," OpenAI spokesman Jake Wilczynski said in a statement to The Washington Post. "We build our AI models using publicly available data, in a manner protected by fair use and related principles, and supported by long-standing and widely accepted legal precedents."

Since the release of ChatGPT, OpenAI has become entangled in legal battles with artists, actors, and authors, as well as media companies. The New York Times filed a closely watched copyright infringement suit in a federal court in Manhattan in late 2023; eight other daily U.S. newspapers sued the company in April.

Increasingly, the fight over copyright and artificial intelligence has become global in scope. Asian News International (ANI) launched its legal challenge in November, the same month that a group of Canadian news organizations filed suit against OpenAI in Ontario Superior Court.

Courts and governments around the world are scrambling to set boundaries around the development of generative AI, which is developed by running complex algorithms on huge datasets often taken from the public internet. OpenAI could face a particularly acute challenge in India, analysts say, because copyright laws here provide content creators with stronger protections than in the United States.

The Indian lawsuit, filed by ANI, argues that OpenAI operates as an unfair competitor and that its language models attribute false responses to ANI. OpenAI is "diverting traffic" from the agency to ChatGPT by offering itself as a free "convenient alternative" to paying for the original content, the complaint alleges.

ANI declined to comment for this story.

Other news associations such as the Digital News Publishers Association, whose members include the Indian Express and the Hindustan Times, have attempted to join the lawsuit.

Included in ANI's legal complaint is a series of WhatsApp messages sent last year by the news agency's director, Ishaan Prakash, to a top OpenAI executive, providing a window into high-level communications before the lawsuit.

"My apologies if this comes across as threatening but it stems from worry and frustration," Prakash wrote in a July message to Pragya Misra, OpenAI's public policy chief in India. "Worry - ANI IPR is being used without our authorization. Frustration - After unauthorized use, we have documented misinformation stemming from an incorrect interpretation of ANI work."

As its legal challenges have mounted, OpenAI has struck licensing deals with major publishers, including the Associated Press, the Financial Times, Time magazine, Condé Nast, and Politico owner Axel Springer. ANI -- whose subscribers include major outlets such as the BBC -- claims its repeated requests to enter into a similar arrangement have been rejected.

"OpenAI has entered into agreements with various big media houses in the West to train its models on, why not with India's largest news agency if you are present in this country too?" Prakash wrote to Misra, according to the complaint.

Altman's trip to India, where he is due to meet with members of civil society and government officials, is the latest stop on an international tour. Earlier this week, he was in Japan, where SoftBank pledged billions of dollars to OpenAI. After India, Altman will head to Paris to attend a summit co-chaired by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The global charm offensive by OpenAI coincides with the recent appearance of an unexpected rival, the Chinese company DeepSeek, which stunned Silicon Valley and Wall Street last month with the release of a new chatbot it claimed was cheaper to develop.

In December, Altman donated $1 million to Donald Trump's inaugural fund and has sought to pitch his company to decision-makers in Washington as a bulwark against China's AI ambitions. Analysts say the growing competition from DeepSeek may push OpenAI to double down on global relationships and seek commercial advantages abroad.

Gupta, the copyright lawyer, said Altman's stop in India could be part of an effort to convince the country to move in the direction of Japan and Singapore, where there have been new legal carve-outs for the company's algorithmic training.

In considering the ANI case, India's judiciary must wrestle with fundamental questions about the future of AI, legal experts say, in ways that go beyond the American legal challenges. While the New York Times, for example, alleges OpenAI violated its paywall, ANI argues that even its publicly available material should be protected from scraping.

The case will not only decide whether generative AI tools are made available to Indian users but is also likely to determine whether India becomes a favorable destination for the training of LLMs," Gupta said, using the shorthand for large language models.

The lawsuit also has the potential to open up a "geopolitical can of worms," said Meghna Bal, a technology lawyer and director of the Esya Center, a think tank based in New Delhi. "Trump has signaled pretty clearly that you better learn to play ball with our companies and not target them with regulation -- or else."

Pranshu Verma in Washington and Gerrit De Vynck in San Francisco contributed to this report.