Digital news outlets owned by Indian billionaires Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani, along with other major outlets like the Indian Express and Hindustan Times, have filed a legal challenge against OpenAI. They accuse the company of misusing their copyrighted content for training the ChatGPT model.

Media companies, including Adani’s NDTV and Ambani’s Network18, have filed a case in a New Delhi court because they are worried that their news websites are being "scraped." Scraping means that their content is being copied and used without permission to help train ChatGPT. The Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA), which represents these major news companies, has also joined the lawsuit. In the court documents, they say that OpenAI’s actions are "a clear and present danger to the valuable copyrights" of these news publishers, meaning that it could harm their rights to control how their content is used.

Media publishers seek to protect their work from AI

This legal action is part of a larger series of lawsuits against OpenAI in India. Last year, the local news agency ANI was the first to file a case against ChatGPT’s creator. Now, both global and Indian book publishers have also joined in. The latest legal filing, which hasn't been made public yet, accuses OpenAI of "wilful scraping... and adaptation of content" from news websites without permission. This means they are being accused of purposely copying and using news articles without getting approval from the website owners.

OpenAI has not responded to requests for comments, but the company has previously denied such claims. It insists that its AI systems use only publicly available data, which they argue qualifies as "fair use." However, this new lawsuit highlights the continued tension between tech companies and content creators regarding how AI models use copyrighted material.

None of the Indian media companies, including those that are part of the DNPA, have offered public comment on the matter yet. However, this legal action is a major move in the ongoing battle over digital rights and AI usage in India.