Written by Arpan Chaturvedi, Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – OpenAI has told an Indian court that any order to remove the training data that powers its ChatGPT service would be inconsistent with its legal obligations in the United States, according to a recent filing seen by Reuters.
The Microsoft-backed AI company also said that it was not within the jurisdiction of Indian courts to hear the copyright infringement case filed by local news agency ANI since there is no presence of OpenAI in the country.
In the most high-profile and closely followed lawsuit over the use of AI in India, ANI sued Delhi-based OpenAI in November, accusing it of using the news agency’s published content without permission to train ChatGPT.
OpenAI responded to the lawsuit, which also seeks to delete ANI data already stored by ChatGPT, in an 86-page filing in the Delhi High Court dated January 10 that was not previously reported.
OpenAI and other companies have faced a wave of similar lawsuits from prominent copyright holders over alleged misuse of their work to train AI models, including a case brought by The New York Times against OpenAI in the US.
OpenAI has repeatedly denied the allegations, saying its AI systems use publicly available data fairly.
During a hearing in November, OpenAI told a Delhi court that it would no longer use ANI’s content, but the news agency said its published works were stored in ChatGPT memory and should be deleted.
In the January 10 filing, OpenAI said it is currently defending lawsuits in the United States regarding the data its models were trained on, as laws there require the data to be preserved during pending hearings.
It added that OpenAI “is therefore legally obligated, under US laws, to preserve said training data and not delete it.”
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.
In its report, OpenAI also said that the compensation sought by ANI was not subject to the processes of Indian courts and was outside its jurisdiction.
The company “does not have an office or permanent establishment in India… The servers on which ChatGPT stores its training data are likewise located outside India.”
ANI, in which Reuters has a 26% stake, said in a statement that it believed the Delhi court had jurisdiction to decide the matter and would provide a detailed response.
A Reuters spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the agency said in November that it was not involved in ANI’s business practices or operations.
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