Fair Dealing In The Age Of AI: Lessons From ANI v OpenAI

Introduction 

In July 2026, the Delhi High Court declined to grant ANI Media an interim injunction against OpenAI, being the first Indian Court to substantively engage on whether training a large language model with copyrighted content is unlawful.¹ At the centre of this finding is whether OpenAI’s use of ANI’s articles to train its models, fall under the ambit of the ‘fair dealing’ exception under Section 52(1)(a) of the Copyright Act, 1957 (“Act”).

Section 52(1)(a) has never been amended or been the subject of a judicial proceeding, in the context of AI training before. A prima facie interpretation of this provision meant the Court had to resolve three distinct issues:

1. Commercial use: Merely because OpenAI is a commercial enterprise that monetises its tool ‘ChatGPT’, does their activity of training the AI model using copyrighted material, take it outside the purview of “private or personal use”?