India's copyright law predates generative AI by nearly seven decades, leaving a critical gap in how courts can address AI-related disputes. The Copyright Act of 1957 contains no direct clauses regarding AI-produced works, the use of copyrighted content for training AI systems, authorship of machine-generated content, or liability when AI creates infringing material. As generative AI systems become increasingly capable of producing text, images, music, and code, legal experts warn that India's existing framework is fundamentally unprepared to handle these emerging challenges.

The problem became impossible to ignore when The New York Times filed suit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the defendants unlawfully used millions of the newspaper's copyrighted articles, investigations, opinion pieces, and guides to train large language models (LLMs), which are AI systems trained on vast amounts of text data to generate human-like responses. This high-profile case raised a question that applies globally, including in India: is using copyrighted content to train AI systems legal, and does the creator's consent matter ?

What Gaps Exist in India's Current Copyright Framework?

India's copyright law was designed to protect human creativity and intellectual work. Section 13 of the Copyright Act specifies that copyright protection applies to original literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, cinematograph films, and sound recordings. The law's emphasis on "original work" assumes that creativity stems from human effort. However, generative AI systems can now produce content with minimal human involvement, creating ambiguity that the 1957 law never anticipated.

The gaps are substantial and multifaceted. Courts and policymakers currently lack clear guidance on several critical issues:

• Authorship and Ownership: When an AI system generates content, who legally owns it? Is it the person who wrote the prompt, the company that built the AI, or no one at all?
• Training Data Use: Can companies legally use copyrighted works to train AI models without permission, and does fair use doctrine apply to machine learning?
• Infringement Liability: If an AI system produces content that infringes on existing copyrights, who bears legal responsibility for the violation?
• AI-Generated Work Status: Should copyright protection extend to content created entirely by AI, or only to works where humans exercised meaningful creative control?

Landmark Indian cases like Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak, which emphasizes originality based on skill, judgment, and creativity, and R.G. Anand v. M/S. Delux Films, which distinguishes between ideas and their expression, remain important legal precedents. However, both were decided long before AI technology emerged, making them insufficient to address modern challenges.

How Are Other Countries Approaching AI Copyright?

While India grapples with outdated legislation, other jurisdictions have begun developing frameworks to address AI and copyright. The approaches vary significantly, reflecting different legal traditions and policy priorities.

• United States: Ongoing discussions center on the fair use doctrine, which permits limited use of copyrighted material for purposes like criticism, commentary, and research. The debate focuses on whether training AI models qualifies as fair use, with significant disagreement among legal experts and industry stakeholders.
• European Union: The EU introduced Directive 2019/790 to regulate copyright in the Digital Single Market. This directive includes specific provisions for text and data mining, allowing certain uses of copyrighted material for research and innovation under defined conditions.
• United Kingdom: The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988 recognizes computer-generated works, though legal experts question whether these provisions remain valid given the rapid advancement of generative AI models.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the UN agency responsible for intellectual property matters, has acknowledged that AI raises complex legal questions about training data use, ownership of AI-created works, and attribution of creativity. Rather than imposing a uniform global solution, WIPO has encouraged its member countries to develop balanced approaches tailored to their own legal systems and policy goals.

What Reform Framework Are Legal Experts Proposing?

Legal researchers studying India's copyright challenges have proposed a new approach called the "human creativity control" framework. This model would determine the level of copyright protection based on how much meaningful creative control a human exercised in the creation process.

Under this framework, copyright protection would be granted when a human exercises meaningful creative control in several stages of the AI creation process: writing the initial prompts that guide the AI, selecting which AI-generated outputs to use, and modifying or finalizing the content before publication. This approach aims to create a clear distinction between work created by humans using AI as a tool and content produced entirely by AI systems with minimal human involvement.

"Copyright protection would be provided where a human exercises meaningful creative control while making the prompts and further in the selection modification finalisation of the outputs. Such a framework would enable courts and policy makers to differentiate between work created by humans and content produced by AI, thus, promoting legal certainty while maintaining the fundamental objective of the copyright law to protect human intellectual creativity," explained legal researchers studying India's copyright reform needs.

Legal Researchers, Vintage Legal

This framework addresses a core tension in copyright law: the need to protect human creativity while allowing technological innovation. By focusing on human creative control rather than simply banning AI use or granting blanket protection to all AI-generated content, the framework offers a middle path that could work across different industries and use cases.

Why Does India's Legal Gap Matter Now?

India's copyright law gap matters because generative AI is already reshaping creative industries across the country. AI systems are being used in education, medicine, journalism, business writing, software development, and legal services. As these technologies become more prevalent, the absence of clear legal rules creates uncertainty for creators, companies, and courts.

Without legislative clarification, Indian courts will continue to apply 1957-era copyright principles to 2020s-era technology. This approach risks either over-protecting outdated interests or under-protecting creators and innovators. The research examining India's copyright law concludes that while the current framework provides a foundation for protecting human creativity, it requires significant legislative clarifications and policy reforms to balance innovation, creators' rights, and the public interest in the age of generative AI.

As generative AI continues to advance globally, India's legal community faces an urgent task: modernizing copyright law to address questions of authorship, ownership, training data use, and liability that the 1957 Act never contemplated. The human creativity control framework represents one potential path forward, but implementation will require legislative action, judicial interpretation, and ongoing policy dialogue as technology continues to evolve.