Government to frame new ‘artificial intelligence law’ to protect media, content creators: IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw

The Indian government is planning to enact a new artificial intelligence law, a major step to protect news publishers and content creators from copyright infringement by companies while training artificial intelligence (AI) models, Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said. The development comes after the government forced companies to obtain licenses before launching untested models, a decision that was highly publicized but was later eventually reversed.

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Artificial Intelligence Laws to Protect News Publishers and Content Creators

Towards economic timesThe minister said that while there would be “good room for innovation”, the AI ​​law would “strongly protect rights and sharing between content creators, news publishers and companies developing AI technologies such as large language models (LLMs)” income”). The minister said: “The transition is happening. Our position is that the transition should not be disruptive because the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people are involved. “

The introduction of the law will focus on its financial and commercial impact as well as creativity in terms of intellectual property rights. Although there is no concrete news, the new artificial intelligence law may form part of the Digital India Act proposed last year to replace the Information Technology Act, 2000.

The minister said: “One idea is to form a self-regulatory body. But we think this is not enough. We think this regulation should be done through legislation. We have consulted the industry. After the elections, we will start a formal consultation process and Towards legislation.”

Also read: IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar talks AI, deepfakes and India’s digital growth at DNPA event

The battle between news publishers and artificial intelligence companies

Although unclear, the new AI law may be a welcome move in the context of lawsuits filed against AI companies by news publishers. The New York Times has become the first major publisher to sue ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Copilot developer Microsoft, accusing them of infringing on the copyrights of millions of articles used to train their respective artificial intelligence chatbots. The New York Times also claims that these AI models are diverting network traffic away from the same source of their training data, which could lead to greater financial impact.

OpenAI argued that The Times knew since 2020 that OpenAI was using its articles to train ChatGPT and only cared about it when its popularity exploded, which happened in 2022. It further said the lawsuit had “no legal basis.”

But it’s not just the big publishers that accuse AI companies of copyright infringement when training AI models and chatbots. In the past few months, novelists including John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George R.R. Martin have sued OpenAI, alleging “fair use” Copyrighted Works. Still, the battle between news publishers and AI companies continues, and India’s proposed AI law could be a welcome move.

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