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Senior Advocate Amit Sibal, representing ChatGPT, argued that, “Facts which are news of the day cannot be protected under copyright laws. The first person who posts the fact has not created the fact but has discovered it first. The discoverer finds and records but does not create that fact”.
ChatGPT, on Tuesday, before the Delhi High Court, argued that “news of the day” is not protected under copyright laws. The statement came in response to ANI’s allegations of copyright infringement over the use of its content for training artificial intelligence language models like ChatGPT.
The bench of Justice Amit Bansal recorded all the submissions and listed the matter for further consideration on April 29, 2025.
Senior Advocate Amit Sibal, representing ChatGPT, argued on the issue of whether the use of ANI's copyrighted data by ChatGPT to generate responses amounted to copyright infringement. He argued that the training of large language models did not fall under Sections 14 or 15 of the Copyright Act. According to him, ChatGPT was not designed to reproduce content but to generate new expressions.
Senior Advocate Amit Sibal read relevant portions of the plaint and simultaneously explained OpenAI’s position on the matter. He asserted that ANI had not specifically identified the works it claimed ownership over. He pointed out that ANI’s website itself hosted third-party content and contained disclaimers of authorship. Further, ANI had not submitted a list of its subscribers to support its claim of loss resulting from the alleged infringement.
He emphasized the need to determine whether a substantial portion of ANI's work had actually been copied. Referring to a cease-and-desist notice issued before the lawsuit, Senior Advocate Amit Sibal noted that ANI had cited only five instances of alleged reproduction, of which only one, according to OpenAI, could be remotely considered similar. He contended that news reports, such as those at issue in this case, were protected only to the extent of their expression, not their underlying ideas or facts.
The court queried how an interview, in which ANI had invested resources, could be reproduced by others. In response, Senior Advocate Amit Sibal compared the situation to two journalists independently reporting the same story, arguing that as long as the expression differed, it would not constitute reproduction. He further stated that originality in copyright law protected expression, not facts or ideas.
Senior Advocate Amit Sibal argued, “If one cannot report an interview just because another reporter did it first, then you are effectively stopping the dissemination of news”.
Advocate Sidhanth Kumar, representing ANI, disagreed and stated that the privilege of regenerating content from interviews or reports extended only to journalists, not to AI tools or the general public. He raised concerns over exclusive interviews and questioned the permissibility of accessing such content through AI models.
Senior Advocate Amit Sibal reiterated that while he did not dispute the originality of ANI’s content, he maintained that copyright law did not protect discovered facts. He emphasized that facts, such as sporting events or interviews, did not belong exclusively to the first reporter who documented them.
“I am not saying that there is no originality, but the originality is not protected through the facts or ideas, but of expression. The originality of expression is protected”, Senior Advocate Sibal argued.
To reinforce his arguments, Senior Advocate Amit Sibal presented examples from ChatGPT’s responses, including instances where prompts related to public figures like Omar Abdullah, Reeva Malhotra, or Neeraj Chopra led to varying and non-identical outputs. He claimed that this variation in expression further supported the view that ChatGPT did not reproduce ANI's content.
The court also addressed the matter of attribution and its legal significance. While acknowledging that attribution might indicate the source of information, Senior Advocate Amit Sibal maintained that this did not equate to reproduction of copyrighted expression. He criticized ANI’s reliance on partial extracts of articles in their pleadings and argued that such selective presentation did not offer a complete basis for legal comparison.
The hearing also saw discussions around probative similarity, with Advocate Kumar referencing ANI’s interview with Neeraj Chopra’s mother. The court was asked to examine the extent to which quoted or reported statements may be protected under copyright law.
Senior Advocate Amit Sibal concluded by highlighting case laws and judicial precedents to argue that copyright law did not grant exclusive rights over facts, even if they were first reported by a particular agency. He reiterated that the essence of copyright protection lay in the originality of expression—not in the discovery or narration of facts. In the previous hearing, OpenAI had claimed that there is no general prohibition on the use of data under the copyright law. Whereas Advocate Sidhanth Kumar had contended that OpenAI using ANI’s content to train its language models leads to dilution of ANI’s market, resulting in unfair competition.
For ANI: Advocates Sidhant Kumar, Akshit Mago, Manyaa Chandok, Om Batra, Anshika Saxena and Shagun ChopraFor OpenAI: Senior Advocate Amit Sibal with Advocates Sanjeev Kapoor, Nirupam Lodha, Madhav Khosla, Gautam Wadhwa, Moha Paranjpe, Vanshika Thapliyal, Ankit Handa, Darpan Sachdeva, Saksham Dhingra, Rajat Bector, For Intervenors: Advocates Ameet Datta, Ayush Hoonka, Riddima, Naimish Tewari, Akshay Natrajan and Harsh KaushikCase Title: ANI Media Pvt Ltd v Open AI (CS(COMM) - 1028/2024)
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