There are three takeaways in the the Delhi High Court’s recent decision in ANI v. OpenAI. The first is interpreting copyright law in a technologically neutral manner. OpenAI contended that its activities qualified as research, an activity deemed non-infringing under the law. ANI’s position, however, effectively confined the protection accorded to research to activities undertaken by human beings. The court rejected this distinction, observing that machines are increasingly capable of undertaking tasks that were once the sole remit of humans, including research. To deny protection simply because such activities are machine-mediated would risk of stymying societal progress when these technologies ultimately operate at the behest of and for the benefit of humans.

By drawing parity between machine- and........

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