ANI Sues OpenAI For 'Exploiting' Its News Content

Asian News International, popularly known as ANI, has sued OpenAI for allegedly “exploiting” its “original news content” without due authorisation, amounting to intellectual property rights violation. In a lawsuit, the Indian news agency said that the ChatGPT owner trained its AI models for commercial gains and showed incorrect accreditation to statements and news through its chatbot.

Filed in the Delhi High Court, the ANI's 287-page lawsuit accuses OpenAI for violating the rights in two ways. First, the Microsoft-backed company used ANI's content to train its large language models (LLMs). Second, ChatGPT shows ANI's content verbatim in response to user queries. OpenAI also allegedly accredited statements, including pieces of news and speeches, to ANI wrongly. The agency has warned that such “hallucinations” pose “a real threat to ANI's reputation” and even spread fake news.

OpenAI, however, has rejected the allegations made by the agency. In a statement, the leading Gen AI company's spokesperson said, “We take great care in our products and design process to support news organisations. We are actively engaged in constructive partnerships and conversations with many news organisations around the world, including India, to explore opportunities, listen to feedback, and work collaboratively.” The spokesperson added that OpenAI builds its “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.”

The AI company argued that since OpenAI does not have servers in India, the lawsuit lacks jurisdiction.

News vs AI

While ANI's allegations against OpenAI marks a first such lawsuit in India, there are several ongoing cases worldwide where media and news organisations have dragged major AI companies to court. In January earlier this year, The New York Times sued OpenAI for producing copyrighted works as verbatim, instead of using them as source of information. The Sam Altman-led company also faces similar cases in Canada and Germany.