AI Copyright Gaps Leave Indian Ad Agencies Exposed to Risk
India's media and creative agencies are confronting a growing AI copyright dilemma as they invest heavily in generative AI tools to produce advertising content, even as legal experts warn that current Indian copyright law offers no clear shield for AI-generated output. Because the Copyright Act requires human authorship, agencies using AI to create campaigns may end up bearing legal responsibility for that content. In response, the Commerce Ministry has convened a panel of eight experts to examine whether the existing law can adequately address the challenges posed by AI.
- Indian copyright law requires human authorship - no shield for AI outputs
- Agencies may bear liability for AI-generated ad content
- Commerce Ministry panel of 8 experts reviewing the Copyright Act
- Proposed 'mandatory blanket licence' would make AI firms pay royalties
Why AI Copyright Law Leaves Agencies Exposed
The core problem lies in a mismatch between technology and legislation. Indian copyright law was written around the presumption that a human creator sits behind every protected work. Generative AI tools complicate that assumption, since they can produce advertising copy, visuals and campaign assets with minimal direct human input. Legal experts caution that this gap means agencies cannot simply assume protection or immunity for AI-assisted work; instead, they may find themselves liable for content whose authorship and ownership status remains legally ambiguous. For agencies scaling up AI adoption to speed up production and cut costs, this uncertainty represents a real commercial risk alongside the creative upside.
A Blanket Licence Proposal and the Road Ahead
To address the wider tension between AI developers and creators, a proposed framework floats a mandatory blanket licence for AI training. Under this model, AI firms would receive automatic access to copyrighted content but would be required to pay royalties into a central collecting body, which would then distribute funds to creators. The idea attempts to balance two competing demands: AI developers want regulatory clarity so they can keep innovating, while creators and publishers want assurance that their work will not be absorbed into training datasets without consent or compensation. The eight-member panel set up by the Commerce Ministry is now tasked with assessing whether such mechanisms, or amendments to the Copyright Act itself, can resolve these tensions. Until that review concludes, agencies deploying generative AI for advertising work operate in a grey zone, where the benefits of speed and scale come bundled with unresolved questions of liability, ownership and fair compensation for the creators whose work may underpin the very tools they use.
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