Indian publishers join wave of copyright lawsuits against OpenAI.
The Federation of Indian Publishers, representing major publishing houses like Bloomsbury, Penguin Random House, Cambridge University Press, and Pan Macmillan, has filed a lawsuit in the Delhi High Court, Reuters reports.
At the heart of the dispute is a familiar complaint: OpenAI allegedly used copyrighted books and materials to train its AI models without obtaining permission or paying licensing fees. The publishers are demanding that OpenAI either stop accessing their content entirely or begin paying proper licensing fees. If neither option is pursued, they want all training datasets containing their copyrighted materials to be deleted.
The publishers are particularly concerned about ChatGPT's ability to generate detailed book summaries. When tested, the AI can produce chapter-by-chapter breakdowns of copyrighted works - though it does refuse to provide complete text.
As Pranav Gupta, the federation's general secretary, puts it: "This free tool produces book summaries, extracts, why would people buy books then? This will impact our sales, all members are concerned about this."
This lawsuit adds to the growing global pushback against AI companies' use of copyrighted works. Authors, news organizations, and musicians have all launched similar legal challenges, with Canadian publishers recently filing their own case.
For its part, OpenAI maintains its innocence, arguing that its AI systems make fair use of publicly available data - a defense that will likely be tested in courts across multiple jurisdictions in the coming months.
