Generative AI and Copyright issue

Context: Recently, the Federation of Indian Publishers as well as the Asian News International initiated copyright infringement claims against Open AI before the Delhi High Court for training the AI platform with the works of the publishers without their prior consent.

AI platforms employ a technology called Internet scraping by which Large Language Models (LLM) train the platform on all available knowledge. For training purposes, the platform accesses both copyrighted and non-copyrighted content. The copyright infringement cases are fought on subject matters such as literature, music, and photographs.

This has raised two important questions: 

1. Should AI models be allowed to use copyrighted material for training?
2. Can a copyright be given to a content generated by AI?

Should AI models be allowed to use copyrighted material for training?

Arguments for:

• Fair use: Limited copyrighted material use for training permission falls under the fair use doctrine, which allows the use of copyrighted material without permission.
• Innovation: Large-scale training on various data, including copyrighted content, can lead to more advanced and beneficial AI models with wider applications.
• Limited alternatives: Training datasets without copyrighted material might be limited and impractical, hindering AI development. 

Arguments against:

• Copyright infringement: Using copyrighted material without permission can be considered copyright infringement, even if for training purposes.
• Lack of control: Copyright holders might lose control over their works if they are freely used for training AI models.
• Unequal benefits: Large tech companies with access to vast datasets benefit more from this practice, potentially creating unfair competition.

In the Indian scenario, we still don't have any specific litigation in the context of text and data mining by AI. The Indian Copyright Act, 1957, grants exclusive rights to creators (authors, artists, etc.) over their original works for a specific duration. Using a copyrighted work (literary, artistic, musical, etc.) without the owner's permission, in a way that infringes their exclusive rights over it, constitutes copyright infringement. 

Can a copyright be given to a content generated by AI?

In the Copyright Act of 1957 in India, there is no way a non-human can be granted copyright protection. 

• The Act currently recognizes only human authors for copyright protection.
• AI, even advanced models, is not considered a legal author yet.

Way Forward: 

• The use of copyrighted materials for training purposes should generally be considered fair use. 
• At the same time, it should be ensured that if Open AI or anyone else is using copyrighted material for training, they do not seek copyright protection for the content generated by the AI concerned.