OpenAI tells court scrapping ChatGPT data will breach US legal obligations: report

Sam Altman-led OpenAI told the Delhi high court that any order scrapping the training data powering its artificial intelligence (AI) tool ChatGPT would violate its legal obligations in the US, Reuters reported, citing a recent filing.

The Microsoft-backed firm also said that Indian courts “lack the jurisdiction” to hear a copyright infringement case brought by news agency Asian News International (ANI) as the company did not have a presence or servers in the country.

The San Francisco-headquartered company’s filing came in response to ANI’s lawsuit that charged ChatGPT with reproducing the news agency’s content without permission and misattributing a political interview to the publication.

According to ANI, OpenAI potentially damaged the news agency’s credibility and reputation by reproducing its content.

In a detailed court filing submitted on 10 January, OpenAI explained that it is bound by US laws to preserve its training data due to ongoing copyright disputes, including a case brought by The New York Times.

“The company has no office or permanent establishment in India, and its servers are located outside the country,” the filing stated, according to Reuters, which has minority stake in ANI.

OpenAI further said that it cannot remove only ANI’s data while adhering to US legal requirements.

The company has repeatedly maintained that its AI systems fairly use publicly available data and has denied of any wrongdoing.

The company also alleged that ANI itself used its articles as prompts to generate similar outputs on ChatGPT.

The news agency “has sought to use verbatim extracts of its own article as a prompt, in an attempt to manipulate ChatGPT,” the filing reportedly stated.

The case is one of many such cases that show growing concerns over copyright issues in the AI industry.

While ANI’s lawsuit is the first of its kind in India, global media organizations have taken OpenAI to court over copyright infringement.

OpenAI has recently signed licensing deals with some media outlets, including Time magazine and The Financial Times, but questions of consent and compensation remain contentious.

The Delhi high court is set to hear the case on 28 January.

Reuters and ANI did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.