AI-Generated Content And Copyright Protection In India: Navigating Authorship, Ownership And Emerging Legal Challenges

Introduction

Generative Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) has transformed the way content is created across industries, enabling users to generate text, images, music, software code and audiovisual content within seconds. While these technological advancements have unlocked new opportunities for businesses and creators, they have also raised fundamental questions concerning copyright ownership, authorship and the use of copyrighted works for training AI models.

India’s copyright framework, primarily governed by the Copyright Act, 1957 (“Act”), was enacted at a time when creative works were inherently associated with human authors. The emergence of autonomous AI systems has exposed gaps in the existing legal framework, particularly regarding whether AI-generated outputs qualify for copyright protection, who owns such works, and whether the use of copyrighted material for AI training amounts to infringement.