An industry body consisting of Indian news publishers, including Hindustan Times’ digital arm (HT Digital Streams) , the Indian Express’ digital wing (IE Online Media Services Private Limited), NDTV Convergence, and DNPA (Digital News Publishers Association) filed an intervention application on Monday in the Delhi High Court in connection with ANI’s lawsuit against ChatGPT creator OpenAI.
Notably, Times group (a DNPA member) is not a part of this intervention application. What does the collective body want? The body aims to be heard in the matter, arguing that the legal precedent established by the ANI lawsuit could significantly influence how news is both gathered and distributed.
Notably, this comes days after the Federation of Indian Publishers (FIP), which comprises Penguin Random House, Bloomsbury India, Wiley India, Pan Macmillan India, Rupa Publications, and other members, sought to join ANI’s lawsuit against OpenAI.
ANI’s Lawsuit
For those unfamiliar with the case, ANI, a leading news agency, filed a lawsuit against the generative AI giant, OpenAI, alleging that it has used its “original news content” without authorisation. The agency has reportedly alleged that OpenAI used its content to train its Large Language Models (LLMs) and that ChatGPT, its AI bot based on the same LLMs, reflects ANI’s content exactly when users submit questions to the bot.
In its lawsuit, ANI warns that OpenAI’s “hallucinations” pose a threat and may be grounds for misinformation. ANI also alleges that OpenAI has attributed statements and news to ANI that never happened or exist.
DNPA’s Says Indian News Industry To Be Affected
As part of the application, DNPA states that OpenAI violates Intellectual Property (IP) rights by using content from member websites without consent, licenses, or any authorisation. Furthermore, the application asserts that this practice will negatively impact the entire Indian news industry and the journalists employed by it.
Moreover, DNPA also mentioned that its members constantly face challenges posed by big tech, including the struggle to monetise news content without proper compensation for original news creators.
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This Isn’t The First Instance Of A Lawsuit Against OpenAI By A News Publisher
In December 2023, the New York Times sued OpenAI and its backer, Microsoft, alleging that they “copied” the publisher’s articles and other content to train their AI models – the same allegation made by ANI.
Later, OpenAI responded to The New York Times, accusing the publication of using “deceptive prompts that blatantly violated OpenAI’s terms of use” to manipulate ChatGPT.
