Digital news outlets in India, including billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, have filed a legal complaint against OpenAI, alleging that it used their copyrighted content without permission. The complaint, filed in a New Delhi court, involves leading publishers such as NDTV (owned by Adani), Network18 (owned by Ambani), The Indian Express and Hindustan Times. The media companies allege that OpenAI scraped their websites to collect content to train its AI tool ChatGPT.

The legal filing, reviewed by Reuters, argues that OpenAI’s actions threaten the copyrights of Indian media companies and violate intellectual property laws. The spokespersons claim that OpenAI has entered into licensing agreements with foreign outlets but that it is undermining local media businesses and has failed to do so with Indian companies.

The case is part of a broader global legal dispute over the use of copyrighted material to train AI models. Last year, a similar case was filed by Indian news agency ANI, which has attracted significant attention. OpenAI has repeatedly denied the allegations, saying it is using publicly available data under the fair use doctrine.

Indian media outlets argue that OpenAI’s actions could harm press freedom and democracy in the country because the company profits from Indian media content without contributing to the local media industry. A court hearing in the ANI case is scheduled for Tuesday. OpenAI has not yet responded to the new filing.