Generative AI And Copyright Law In India: Who Owns The Training Data?

Generative artificial intelligence has opened new frontiers in creativity, law, and commerce. From drafting text to producing artwork, these systems depend on massive volumes of pre-existing material. That raises a pressing question: when AI learns from books, music, or images created by others, what does Indian copyright law say about it? The debate is not just academic. It cuts to the core of whether using copyrighted works for machine training is permissible, whether such use falls under fair dealing, and what safeguards companies should put in place before deploying AI models.

The framework around AI copyright in India remains unsettled. Unlike some jurisdictions that have explicitly carved out exceptions for text and data mining, India continues to operate within the traditional boundaries of its Copyright Act, 1957. This makes the treatment of training data copyright in India a legal grey zone, where businesses, creators, and policymakers are all searching