Indian Publishers Sue OpenAI Over Unauthorized Use of Content in ChatGPT Training
Indian book publishers including Bloomsbury, Penguin Random House, Cambridge University Press and Pan Macmillan filed a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI at the Delhi High Court, alleging unauthorized use of their published content to train ChatGPT. The publishers seek to stop OpenAI's access to copyrighted material and demand deletion of training datasets with compensation, while OpenAI maintains it makes fair use of publicly available data.
What happened
The Federation of Indian Publishers filed a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI at the Delhi High Court in December 2024, on behalf of its members including Bloomsbury, Penguin Random House, Cambridge University Press, Pan Macmillan, Rupa Publications and S.Chand and Co.
The lawsuit concerns ChatGPT's use of publishers' copyrighted content, including book summaries, in training its AI system without authorization or licensing.
Reported impact
The Federation of Indian Publishers seeks to stop OpenAI from accessing their copyright content and demands deletion of datasets used in AI training with explanation of compensation.
According to the Federation's general secretary Pranav Gupta, the unauthorized use "impacts creativity."
Index analysis
The case is one of multiple global lawsuits against OpenAI by authors, news outlets and musicians alleging unauthorized use of copyrighted work to train AI services.
OpenAI has repeatedly denied such allegations, saying its AI systems make fair use of publicly available data.
Governance controls
OpenAI responded to similar legal proceedings by arguing that any order to delete training data would result in a violation of its U.S. legal obligations and that Indian courts lack jurisdiction as its servers are located abroad.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.