AI-Generated Content And Copyright Law In India: Who Owns The Copyright?
Divya Verma, Research Scholar, College of Legal Studies, COER University
Priyanka Dobriyal, Research Scholar, College of Legal Studies, COER University
ABSTRACT
Generative AI has challenged one of the core tenets of copyright that posits a human creator for a work. This paper looks at the Indian copyright law, which is rooted in Section 2(d) of the Copyright Act, 1957, and how it is adapting to the machine-generated literary, artistic, musical and dramatic works. It covers the Copyright Office's initial recognition of the AI application RAGHAV as a co-author of the work titled "Suryast" in its brief and later withdrawn recognition and the reasoned order issued by the Registrar of Copyrights dismissing Stephen Thaler's application to register "A Recent Entrance to Paradise" with the AI system DABUS as the author of the work, as well as the decision of the Delhi High Court in ANI Media Pvt. Ltd. v. Open AI OpCo LLC on the concept of fair-dealing in the training of AI systems. The paper places these developments in the context of the "person who causes the work to be created" formula of Section 2(d)(vi), the originality standard established in Eastern Book Co. v. D.B. Modak, as well as comparative analysis of the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union. It claims that Indian law already provides a satisfactory, if incomplete, solution to the question of AI-aided works that are directed by humans, but doesn't provide any solution for purely AI-generated works in a doctrine that can only be filled in by Parliament and not administrative interpretation. The paper concludes with practical suggestions for the statutory clarification, which were made by Parliament in 1994, when generative AI was not yet around.
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Copyright, Authorship, Copyright Act 1957, Section 2(d)(vi), Originality, Generative AI, Fair dealing, RAGHAV, DABUS.
