A petition has been filed in the Delhi High Court, seeking directions to the Centre to frame laws that would protect talented artists from the misuse of their original works by AI platforms. The petition has sought amendment to the IT Act through the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology for laying a framework for regulation and enforcement of AI technologies to meet the potential risks to society and the systems.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela has slated the plea for hearing, along with an already pending petition regarding deepfake technology misuse. The Court had earlier directed a committee constituted by the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to look into deepfakes-related issues and interact with internet intermediaries, telecom service providers, and victims of deepfake technology.
Filed by Kanchan Nagar, Vikas Saboo, and Mash Audio Visuals Private Limited, the plea alleges that AI platforms are using the original works of artists to train generative AI software without any lawful permission, thus seriously violating copyright protections under the Copyright Act of 1957.
The petitioners say that such unauthorized use puts the livelihoods of artists in jeopardy, since machines would replace their jobs, thus threatening the sustainability of their careers. It has been reported that AI systems are victimizing artists through the exploitation of their copyrighted works without their consent or adequate compensation.
Recent reports suggest AI software is being trained to generate images taken by photographers by misappropriating images uploaded on stock photography sites like Images Bazaar. Such AI platforms allegedly hack into copyrighted images without the owner’s permission and utilize those to train their algorithms that can produce outputs similar in all aspects to the original photographs by the artists.
These actions constitute an infringement of intellectual property rights not only through the use of images created by photographers as data input to train the models, but also in generating synthetic images representing copyrighted works. In fact, this is going against the consolidated work of creative professionals, including those of Images Bazaar, by breaching the personality rights of freelance models who figure in these images.
The plea emphasizes that the work of artists, from photographers and writers to music producers and designers, is being used to train AI systems able to create images and texts in their styles. The situation is an existential threat to artists and creators, warns the petition.
