The government is reportedly looking to frame new AI laws that can safeguard the rights of news publishers and content creators and also minimize any kind of harm to users. A news report quoting Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Minister for Communications and Electronics & Information Technology said that the new law will be very balanced and strong on securing the rights.
He also added that it will not only facilitate the fair sharing of proceeds among news publishers, content creators and AI-enabled technologies but also also leave space for innovation.
Vaishnaw also told the media house that the new law can either be an independent legislation or be a part of the Digital India Bill, which is set to replace the Information Technology Act of 2000.
Vaishnaw reportedly said that while the transition is happening, the government intends to prevent it from being disruptive since lakhs of livelihoods are involved.
The law will ensure that creativity will be respected in terms of both intellectual property and well as financial implications, he said. The minister also added that these views have been shared with tech players, who are more or less in agreement. These companies, he said, pointed out that the industry should work with governments to find solutions to these global challenges.
Vaishnaw reportedly stated that a self-regulatory body won't be enough and the regulation has to be done with a legislative angle. The industry has already been consulted and a formal consultation process will be launched post-elections, after which it will move towards legislation, he said.
The AI problem
There have been global calls from news publishers and content creators to rein in the encroachment of AI on copyrighted articles. Generative AI tools, including ChatGPT, are based on Large Language Models (LLM), which are trained on vast numbers of documents taken from the internet: news articles, authored essays, technical reports, blogs, and social media posts among others.
Global media houses like the New York Times, The Guardian, CNN and Reuters have already blocked OpenAI’s access to their online offerings. NY Times has additionally threatened to file a lawsuit against OpenAI training its Generative AI tool on copyrighted articles published by the paper.
In India, news publishers took on all tech firms working on Large Language Models (LLMs) to build their own generative AI tools. e4m earlier reported how over 70 per cent of Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) members have restricted access to Microsoft-backed OpenAI. Dainik Bhaskar and Amar Ujala barred all “AI and tech firms” from scanning and using their digital content to train their LLM models without their written permission.
Indian publishers allege that while Google built its business model on their content, it never shared a fair share of revenue with them, a charge that has been vehemently rejected by Google India.
“We wish to serve the public for free, but our content is not available for free to enterprises who content and then make money without any attribution. Publishers invest huge money to produce the content including procuring the technology and paying salaries to journalists among others to bring reports from the ground. AI platforms are simply copying our content to develop their model and then making money through subscription-free. This is unfair,” the digital head of a top TV channel told e4m back in September 2023.
