OpenAI Sued by News Agency ANI Over Alleged Violation of Intellectual Property Rights

The news agency ANI has sued ChatGPT maker OpenAI for using its original news content in an unauthorised manner, reported Hindustan Times. According to the report, ANI is the first news Indian publisher to sue an AI organisation in court for violating its intellectual property rights.

The suit is scheduled to be heard by Justice Amit Bansal in the Delhi High Court on Tuesday, November 19. The news agency has alleged that OpenAI has “exploited” its content for commercial gain in two ways. First, OpenAI has used ANI’s content to train its large language models (LLMs). Second, OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, produces ANI’s content verbatim in response to users' queries.

The suit also alleges that OpenAI has accredited statements and news – that never occurred – to ANI. ANI has argued that such “hallucinations” pose “a real threat to ANI’s reputation” and can lead to spread of misinformation that can cause public disorder. The lawsuit has been filed by Delhi-based Unum Law on behalf of ANI.

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In a statement issued later, a spokesperson for OpenAI said, “We take great care in our products and design process to support news organizations. 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.”

The spokesperson said, “[W]e 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.”

In a January 2024 blog post about the New York Times (NYT) lawsuit, OpenAI had said that “regurgitation”, where entire copyrighted works are produced as output in verbatim, “is a rare bug” that OpenAI was “working to drive to zero. The use of copyrighted material to train LLMs is a legally fraught matter globally.