Indian news agency Asian News International (ANI) has taken OpenAI to court, accusing the artificial intelligence firm of using its work without permission for training its chatbot, ChatGPT.
The case, filed in the Delhi High Court, has reignited the debate on the use of journalistic content for the training of AI models. ANI has accused the ChatGPT owner of “exploiting” its “original news content” without authorisation.
The complaint spans 287 pages, according to Indian news outlets. The lawsuit claims OpenAI used ANI’s content to help train its large language models (LLMs). In addition, the AI firm’s chatbot, ChatGPT, shows exact excerpts of content produced by ANI in response to user prompts.
The lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT wrongly attributed pieces of some news reports to ANI, which poses “a real threat to ANI’s reputation”. The court has directed OpenAI to submit a comprehensive response to ANI’s accusations in the first hearing.
OpenAI, on the other hand, has disputed the allegations. The firm says that it stopped using ANI’s content for AI training in September, but the news agency argues there has been “no programmed deletion”.
“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,” says an OpenAI spokesperson, as quoted by Reuters.
OpenAI has previously been taken to court by the New York Times and Chicago Tribune over similar accusations.
