IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announces government’s plan to introduce new ‘AI law’ for safeguarding media and content creators.
The Indian government is taking significant strides to safeguard news publishers and content creators from copyright infringements by companies using artificial intelligence (AI) models. Electronics & Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced plans to introduce a new AI law to address this issue. This decision follows the government’s previous requirement for companies to obtain permits before deploying untested AI models, a controversial decision that was eventually rescinded.
Artificial intelligence law to protect news publishers and content producers
Speaking to the Economic Times, the minister said that while there would be “good space for innovation”, the AI law would be “strong in securing rights and sharing the benefits” of content producers, news publishers and AI technologies such as Large Language Models (LLM). The minister said, “The transition is going on. Our position is that the transition should not be disruptive because it involves lakhs of livelihoods.”
The law would be presented with a focus on creativity, both in terms of its financial and commercial effects as well as intellectual property rights. Although nothing is concrete, the new AI law could be part of the Digital India Act, which was proposed last year and aims to replace the Information Technology Act of 2000.
The minister said: “One idea is to form a self-regulatory body. But we don’t think that would be enough. We think this regulation should be done through the legislative method. We have already consulted the industry. After the election, we will start a formal consultation process and move to legislation.”
The battle between news publishers and AI companies
While nothing is certain, the new AI law could be a welcome step amid lawsuits filed by news publishers against AI companies. The New York Times became the first major publisher to sue both ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Copilot developer Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement over millions of articles used to train their respective AI chatbots. The Times also claimed that these AI models were diverting web traffic away from the very sources on which they were trained, potentially leading to greater financial consequences.
OpenAI claimed that the Times had information about OpenAI training from articles on ChatGPT since 2020 and only cared about it after it exploded in popularity, which happened in 2022. It also called the lawsuit “without merit.”
But big publishers haven’t accused AI companies of copyright infringement when training their AI models and chatbots. In the past few months, writers like John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, and George R.R. Martin, have sued OpenAI for “fair use” of copyrighted works. However, the battle between news publishers and AI companies continues, and India’s proposed AI law could be a welcome step.
