Delhi High Court Refuses Immediate Restraint on OpenAI in ANI Copyright Dispute

A division bench of the Delhi High Court has declined to immediately restrain OpenAI from scraping news content from the agency ANI to train ChatGPT. Justices Avneesh Jhingan and Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora stated that they would not pass an order ex parte without hearing the other side. The court has issued a notice to OpenAI for a response and scheduled the next hearing for December 5.

This development follows a July 24 order from a single judge who refused to grant ANI interim relief. That previous ruling held that OpenAI's use of the material fell within the statutory exception of fair dealing under Indian copyright law. In its current appeal, ANI argues that the single judge broadened the scope of fair dealing to permit commercial exploitation. The agency contends that training a commercial model does not qualify as research or private use under the Copyright Act of 1957 and that OpenAI should obtain a license for its content.

During the proceedings, the Broadband India Forum sought to intervene as a party to the case, arguing that Large Language Models do not violate the Copyright Act. Meanwhile, OpenAI has previously argued that ANI benefited from traffic driven by the search functions of ChatGPT. The court will decide on the intervention application of the Broadband India Forum at the next hearing.