Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a medium of new creativity today, but it is a matter of debate whether this innovation is based on the theft of the hard work of the creators. In America, the courts considered the content ‘learned’ by AI as fair use, but the creators are dissatisfied. In India, news agency ANI has complained of copyright infringement against OpenAI. The existing laws in the country are inadequate for this technological challenge. India should update its intellectual property laws so that creative rights can also be protected along with technological development.
One of the biggest technological leaps of the twenty-first century is generative artificial intelligence – a computer brain that can create everything from stories to news reports, pictures to poems, and court decisions to dialogues. But the question is whether the foundation of this machine’s creativity rests on someone else’s hard work? Is this new technology silently making the material created by composers, writers, journalists, painters, and musicians a part of its knowledge, without their permission, without giving them any credit?
Recently, two courts in the US decided on similar cases. These decisions have provided relief to tech companies for the time being, but the issue is still not completely settled. These decisions have sparked debate across the world, and India is no exception.
Generative artificial intelligence models — such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Meta’s Llama — are trained by studying billions of books, websites, songs, news stories, and images. They are trained in the same way as a student acquires knowledge by reading books, but this student neither takes permission from the author before reading that book, nor gives credit or remuneration to the author. This is where the controversy begins.
In 2024, the first case came in the US in which some novelists accused the company ‘Anthropic’ of using their books to train its artificial intelligence model. The authors said that this was a violation of their intellectual property. But the court ruled that the new content this model is generating is different, new, and changed from the original work. Therefore, it falls under the category of ‘fair use’ and the company cannot be considered a criminal.
In the second case, the company Meta was accused of using literary and journalistic material without permission. The court held that the company had indeed read the protected works, but its purpose was to learn and create something new, so Meta was acquitted, considering this also a ‘transformative use’.
One message from both these decisions is that the courts are currently giving priority to technological innovation, but the question that is growing in the minds of the writers’ community and intellectual workers is that if this is ‘fair use’, then what about their hard work, originality, and rights?
Now let’s turn our attention to India. In 2024, news agency ANI accused OpenAI of copying the language, style, and content of their news stories through dialogue-based models (such as ChatGPT). Publishers’ associations also alleged that these AI companies were commercially exploiting Indian content by ignoring copyright registration in India.
OpenAI argued that it neither runs its servers nor has a permanent office in India. It argued that its technology creates something new, transformative, and useful in the public interest, and this does not amount to intellectual theft.
The case is now pending in the Delhi High Court, and its hearing is scheduled in the first week of July. This makes it clear that in India, this debate has now reached the judicial corridors.
The question is whether India’s existing intellectual property law is ready for this new technological challenge? The Copyright Act, enacted in 1957, has the concept of ‘fair use’, but it does not clearly define cases like artificial intelligence. Neither does India have a mechanism to check whether the materials an AI model is using for training are covered under copyright or not.
Today, writers, poets, painters, musicians, photographers, and journalists are realizing that their creative work is being fed into machines, and in return, they are getting neither credit nor remuneration. This is not only a matter of legal but also a moral concern.
The debate on this topic is not about stopping technology. Innovation and technological progress are necessary, but that progress should not swallow human creativity. If a writer works for ten years to create a novel, and a machine copies the style in two seconds and creates a new ‘product’, it is neither fair nor respectable.
The responsibility of the courts is no longer limited to resolving disputes between companies and individuals, but they must also ensure that future technological development is equally beneficial to all. If someone’s intellectual labour is being usurped for free based on only capital and technology, then it is a violation of democratic and moral values.
India should re-draft its copyright laws, especially in the age of artificial intelligence. A system should be created in which creators should be paid, their names should be mentioned, and their permission should be mandatory if their works are being used by technology.
It is not just a matter of justice; it is a matter of protecting literature, culture, and creativity. If we ignore the creators of our time, future generations will inherit technology, but no sensitivity, no soul.
Gave flight to machines, but snatched the sky from the pen,
If knowledge is without credit, then what kind of science is it?
