In the midst of ongoing global debates and legal battles surrounding the unauthorized use of copyrighted materials to train artificial intelligence (AI) models, the Indian government has made a clear declaration: AI developers must seek permission to use copyrighted materials, especially for commercial purposes.
Addressing questions from the upper house of the Parliament of India, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Som Parkash, released a statement emphasizing that India’s existing intellectual property laws are sufficient to cover innovations in AI and the use of copyrighted materials for training AI models.
“The exclusive economic rights of a copyright owner, granted by the Copyright Act, 1957, obligate the user of Generative AI to obtain permission to use their works for commercial purposes if such use is not covered under the fair dealing exceptions provided under Section 52 of the Copyright Act,” reads the statement issued on Friday (February 9).
The Indian Music Industry (IMI), representing the country’s recorded music industry, welcomed the government’s stance. IMI President and CEO Blaise Fernandes expressed gratitude for the clarification.
In India, as in many other countries, the uncompensated use of copyrighted materials by AI developers has become a pressing concern for intellectual property owners. In January, a group representing newspaper publishers wrote to various government ministries, seeking protection from copyright violations by AI developers.
Digital News Publishers Association Secretary General Sujata Gupta highlighted the need for fair and transparent practices, emphasizing the opportunity to ensure that companies or large language models (LLMs) use data ethically while compensating the sources from which they derive content or data to train their models.
It’s important to note that India’s stance on AI and copyright may not align with other jurisdictions. Legal experts point out that India’s “fair dealing” exceptions to copyright law are narrower than the “fair use” exceptions in US law.
