In this guest column, Amit Dubey, Managing Director of Beat Street Music & Publishing, warns that India’s outdated copyright law leaves creators exposed in the AI era, with pressing questions of authorship, ownership, and accountability.
Imagine you’re a songwriter. Tomorrow, you find an AI-generated track online that sounds eerily close to your last release. Who owns it? Who gets paid? Right now, Indian copyright law has no clear answer.
The Copyright Act, 1957, was written for another era. Even after the 2012 update that added digital protections, it remains silent on artificial intelligence. And that silence has left the music industry exposed.
Take authorship and ownership. The law defines the “author” as a person, which courts interpret as a human or a company. Purely AI-generated works, with no human input, fall straight into the public domain. That means no copyright protection,anyone can copy or use them. For creators and businesses, this wipes out value before it can even be created.
Then there’s the question of training data. AI systems learn by scraping existing content, which may already include your songs or lyrics. Is this fair use, or is it infringement? Rightsholders call it theft. AI companies call it transformative. Until a court rules, it remains a legal grey zone.
Liability is another minefield. If an AI track lifts your melody, who’s accountable,the developer, the user, or the platform hosting it? No one knows. And because there’s no legal requirement for AI companies to disclose what data their models are trained on, creators are left completely in the dark.
The confusion only deepens when you look at policy signals. Recent draft copyright rules spoke about digital payments but ignored AI altogether. A government committee was formed in April 2025 to study the issue, but its report hasn’t been made public. Ministers have suggested AI developers will need permission to use copyrighted works, but these are policy statements,not binding law. Meanwhile, the ANI vs. OpenAI case in the Delhi High Court looms large. Its outcome could finally push the government to act.
Globally, other regions are moving faster. The United States has taken a strict stance, ruling that pure AI works cannot be copyrighted without human authorship. The European Union’s AI Act leans heavily toward creator rights, mandating transparency and offering rightsholders the option to opt out. The United Kingdom goes further, recognizing computer-generated works and crediting the person who arranged their creation. India, by contrast, sits in a murky middle,ambiguous and waiting for reform.
What comes next could reshape the industry. The government’s committee will likely study these global models. Possible outcomes may include exceptions for text and data mining in research, collective licensing or opt-out frameworks for training data, and clearer distinctions between AI-assisted works, which remain copyrightable, and AI-only works, which may not.
For now, composers and lyricists would be wise to document their creative process, showing where human input remains central when using AI tools. Labels and publishers should begin drafting contracts that address AI-created works. Artists should recognize that AI-only tracks may not hold long-term value, while tech companies must prepare for licensing systems that could become mandatory.
India’s creative economy is growing at a historic pace, and its talent is unmatched. But unless the law catches up with technology, those who write, compose, and perform risk losing their most precious asset: ownership of their work. The next few months will determine whether India protects its creatorsor leaves them vulnerable in the age of artificial intelligence.
Attributed By:Amit Dubey,Managing Director at Beat street Music & Publishing