When The Machine Reads The Library: Ani V. Openai And The Question Section 52 Cannot Answer
- IJLLR Journal
- Apr 5
- 1 min read
Pranav Ankush Jadhav, B.A. LL.B., ILS Law College, Pune
ABSTRACT
The pending Delhi High Court case of Asian News International (ANI) v OpenAI Inc raises a deceptively simple question: does training a large language model on copyrighted news content constitute infringement under the Copyright Act, 1957? The answer turns out to be anything but simple. Section 52 of the Act sets out an exhaustive list of permitted acts, and neither the fair dealing provision under Section 52(1)(a) nor the electronic storage exception under Section 52(1)(n) maps cleanly onto what AI companies do when they scrape and process published works at scale. This article examines the doctrinal split that emerged from the submissions of the two amici curiae appointed by the court, analyses why both positions leave the output-stage reproduction question unanswered, and argues that the structural limits of Section 52 cannot be resolved by judicial interpretation alone. It further contends that India needs a narrow, opt-out text and data mining exception modelled on the EU’s CDSM Directive — coupled with explicit output-stage liability — if copyright law is to remain coherent in the age of generative AI.
