ANI accuses ChatGPT of crawling subscriber content in copyright case

New Delhi: Asian News International (ANI), on Tuesday, told the Delhi High Court that OpenAI’s ChatGPT is not only taking content directly from the news agency’s website but also crawls through its subscriber’s content. 

Bolstering their argument that the AI model developed by OpenAI is infringing copyrights, ANI argued that taking content from the agency’s subscribers also amounts to infringement. The advocate representing ANI supported the argument with the example of a news article on the website of the Economic Times, a subscriber to ANI’s services. 

The advocate submitted before the Delhi HC that while ChatGPT crawls from ANI’s website, it also crawls material from ANI’s subscribers. 

Representing the news agency, he said, “While they say that they don't take content from me, they are taking from my subscribers. I do not cease to have control over copyright. I don’t divest control … Merely because I have licensed contact content for public viewing by a person who has paid a subscription or a license fee, I do not cease to have control over that content.” 

The argument from ANI highlighted that while common facts may not entail copyright infringement, the way those facts are narrated does carry a copyright.

Countering this, OpenAI stated that while narrating the facts, similarities are bound to arise.  OpenAI’s advocate argued, “When the facts are narrated by someone else, there will always be a similarity, which comes from the fact that the facts are common between the two narrations.”

ChatGPT’s creators also argued that OpenAI has a licensing agreement with the newspapers from which it may source information. The advocate pointed out that ANI is not a newspaper but “only collects information.” The advocate substantiated the agreement that OpenAI has with the Financial Times. 

ANI has also accused OpenAI of ripping off content from interviews that are published by ANI. 

The case being argued in the Delhi HC emanates from a suit filed by ANI accusing ChatGPT of exploiting the news agency’s original content for commercial gains and to train chatbots fostered by the model. 

The next hearing is scheduled for March 28.