Author: Shilpa Satish Agrawal
Lala Lajpat Rai College of Law
Abstract
The question of copyright ownership in AI-generated works is one of the more pressing unresolved issues in Indian intellectual property law today. The Copyright Act, 1957 protects original literary, artistic, dramatic, and musical works, but it anchors that protection entirely in the concept of a human author. Artificial intelligence systems, which can now generate sophisticated creative content autonomously, have no legal personality and cannot hold rights. The humans involved in the process developers, trainers, prompt writers do not fit neatly into the authorship categories the Act contemplates.
This article examines the gap between technological reality and legal framework in India. It analyses the relevant provisions of the Copyright Act, draws on Indian judicial decisions on authorship and originality, and considers how other jurisdictions have begun to address the issue. The article concludes that India urgently needs legislative reform to bring clarity to a commercial and creative landscape that has already moved well beyond what the existing law was designed to handle.
Introduction
There is a quiet legal crisis building in India’s creative and technology sectors, and most people working in those sectors do not know it yet. Every business that uses AI to generate marketing copy, every publisher putting out AI-assisted content, every startup building products on top of generative AI tools allof them are operating on the assumption that they own what the AI produces. That assumption may well be wrong.
The Copyright Act, 1957 has not been amended to address AI. There is no provision that deals with machine-generated works, no definition that includes algorithmic processes within the concept of authorship, and no judicial decision that has squarely resolved the question. What exists instead is a statute built for human creators being applied awkwardly and uncertainly to a world the drafters never imagined.
This matters beyond academic interest. Copyright protection determines who can commercially exploit a work, who can prevent copying, and who can license the work to others. If AI-generated content has no copyright protection in India, it effectively enters the public domain the moment it is created. Anyone can copy it, reproduce it, and sell it. For businesses that have invested substantially in AI-generated assets, that is a very serious commercial exposure.
The urgency of this issue has only grown with the explosion of generative AI usage in India over the past two years. Addressing it requires first understanding exactly where the existing law breaks down and why
The Copyright Framework and Where It Breaks Down
The Copyright Act, 1957 vests protection in original works under Section 13. The word ‘original’ has been interpreted by Indian courts to mean that the work must originate from the author and reflect the exercise of their own skill, judgment, and intellectual effort a standard confirmed by the Supreme Court in Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak. The work need not be novel in the patent law sense, but it must be the product of genuine human intellectual activity.
Section 2(d) of the Act defines ‘author’ across different categories of works. In every single category, the definition points to a person the person who composes a literary work, makes a photograph, produces a sound recording. There is no category that accommodates an autonomous system. The Act simply does not contemplate a situation where the creative output is produced by a machine without meaningful human direction at the point of creation.
The question of who, among the humans involved with an AI system, might qualify as an author is not straightforward. The company that curated the training data? The user who typed a prompt? Each of these contributions is real, but each is also far removed from what the Act means by authorship. Writing code that enables a machine to generate images is not the same as drawing those images. Typing ‘generate a poem about monsoon’ is not the same as writing the poem. Indian courts applying the skill and judgment standard may find none of these contributions sufficient.
Some commentators have argued that the prompt writer should be treated as the author on the basis that their creative direction shapes the output. This argument has some intuitive appeal, but it runs into difficulty when the prompt is simple or generic, and when the AI’s contribution to the final form of the work is overwhelmingly dominant. There is also the problem that two different users giving the same prompt to the same AI may receive substantially similar outputs which raises further questions about originality and independent creation.
The practical result is a legal vacuum. AI-generated works may not qualify for copyright protection under the existing Act, leaving them effectively unprotected. It is the daily operating reality for a large and growing segment of India’s digital economy.
Relevant Case Laws
1. Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak, (2008) 1 SCC 1 Supreme Court of India
This Supreme Court decision is the foundation of modern Indian copyright jurisprudence on originality. The dispute concerned the copyright claimed by a legal publisher over edited versions of Supreme Court judgments. The court held that mere mechanical reproduction or effort the ‘sweat of the brow’ is not enough to attract copyright.
For AI and copyright, this decision cuts decisively against protection for fully autonomous AI outputs. If a human editor’s mechanical corrections to a legal judgment are insufficient to attract copyright, a user’s two-word prompt to an AI model is almost certainly insufficient too. The decision sets a bar that requires genuine human intellectual input and that bar is difficult to clear when the AI itself is doing the substantive creative work.
2. Amarnath Sehgal v. Union of India, 117 (2005) DLT 717 Delhi High Court
This case recognized moral rights under Indian copyright law for the first time in a comprehensive way. The plaintiff, a celebrated sculptor, successfully argued that the government had violated his moral right of integrity by storing his bronze mural in a warehouse rather than displaying it. The Delhi High Court held that an author’s moral rights including the right to the integrity of the work survive even after the economic rights have been assigned.
The significance of this case for AI-generated content lies in what it reveals about the philosophical foundations of Indian copyright law. Moral rights exist because a creative work is treated as an extension of its author’s personality and identity. That entire framework assumes a human being with a personality, a reputation, and a creative vision that the work expresses. AI systems have none of these things. Amarnath Sehgal thus reinforces, indirectly but powerfully, how deeply human-centric the architecture of Indian copyright law really is and how fundamentally ill-suited that architecture is to handle AI authorship.
3. Navigators Logistics Ltd. v. Kashif Qureshi, CS(COMM) 735/2017 Delhi High Court
This case dealt with copyright in works created with the assistance of computer software, and the Delhi High Court’s reasoning provides a useful middle ground for thinking about AI-assisted content. The court held that works produced with digital tools can attract copyright protection where the human contribution to the creative process is sufficiently substantial and identifiable.
Applied to the AI context, this reasoning draws an important distinction between AI as a tool and AI as an autonomous creator. Where a human uses an AI system as a sophisticated instrument directing its outputs, making meaningful creative choices, and shaping the final work there may be sufficient human authorship to ground a copyright claim. Where the AI operates autonomously with minimal human input, the position is far less clear. This case does not resolve the AI authorship question, but it suggests that Indian courts will focus on the degree of human creative contribution when they eventually have to confront it directly.
Conclusion
Indian copyright law is facing a problem it was not built to solve. The Copyright Act, 1957 assumes human authors throughout in its definitions, in its provisions, in its entire conceptual structure. AI-generated content does not fit that structure, and the mismatch is creating real legal uncertainty for businesses, creators, and platforms across the country.
The courts have not yet delivered a definitive answer. That conclusion will have serious commercial consequences for anyone who has been treating AI-generated content as a protected asset.
Legislative reform is the only real solution. India should consider amending the Copyright Act to introduce a specific provision for computer-generated works similar to Section 9(3) of the UK’s Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, which grants copyright in such works to the person who makes the necessary arrangements for their creation. Such a reform would provide clarity, protect legitimate commercial investment, and ensure that India’s intellectual property framework remains fit for purpose in an economy increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence. The technology has not waited for the law to catch up. It is time the law started running.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Can AI-generated content receive copyright protection in India?
At present, Indian copyright law does not clearly recognize copyright protection for fully AI-generated works. The Copyright Act, 1957 is based on the idea of a human author, and there is no specific provision dealing with autonomous AI-created content.
2. Who is the owner of the copyright in AI-generated work?
The law is currently uncertain on this issue. Possible claimants may include the AI developer, the company operating the AI system, or the user who provides prompts. However, Indian law has not yet definitively recognized any of these parties as the legal author of purely AI-generated works.
3. Does using AI automatically remove copyright protection from a work?
Not necessarily. If a human contributes substantial creative input, judgment, and originality while using AI as a tool, the resulting work may still qualify for copyright protection. The extent of human involvement becomes crucial.
4. Why is human authorship important under Indian copyright law?
Indian copyright law is fundamentally built around human creativity. Courts have repeatedly emphasized that copyright protects works reflecting human skill, judgment, and intellectual effort. Since AI lacks legal personality and human consciousness, it does not fit within the current framework.
5. What if AI-generated content is not protected by copyright?
If a work does not qualify for copyright protection, it may effectively enter the public domain immediately after creation. This means others may freely copy, reproduce, modify, or commercially use the content without permission.
6. What is the significance of Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak in the AI context?
The Supreme Court in this case held that originality requires skill, judgment, and intellectual creativity, not mere mechanical effort. This standard creates difficulty for copyright claims over fully autonomous AI-generated outputs where meaningful human creativity is absent.
7. Can prompt writers be considered authors?
Some scholars argue that prompt writers should qualify as authors because prompts guide AI outputs. However, simple or generic prompts may not satisfy the originality threshold required under Indian law, especially where the AI independently determines most of the final expression.
8. How have other countries addressed AI-generated works?
Certain jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom, recognize copyright in computer-generated works. Under Section 9(3) of the UK’s Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, the author is considered to be the person who made the necessary arrangements for the creation of the work.
9. Has any Indian court directly ruled on AI authorship?
No Indian court has yet delivered a definitive judgment specifically determining copyright ownership in fully AI-generated works. Current legal analysis relies on existing principles of originality and human authorship.
10. Why is legislative reform necessary in India?
The rapid growth of generative AI technologies has exposed gaps in the Copyright Act, 1957. Legislative reform is necessary to provide clarity regarding ownership, commercial exploitation, liability, and protection of AI-generated content in the modern digital economy.
References
1. Copyright Act, 1957 (India).
2. Eastern Book Company v. D.B. Modak, (2008) 1 SCC 1, Supreme Court of India.
3. Amarnath Sehgal v. Union of India, 117 (2005) DLT 717, Delhi High Court.
4. Navigators Logistics Ltd. v. Kashif Qureshi, CS(COMM) 735/2017, Delhi High Court.
5. Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, Section 9(3) (United Kingdom).
6. World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), IP and Artificial Intelligence, Geneva.
7. National IPR Policy, 2016, Ministry of Commerce and Industry (India).
