New Delhi, Dec. 23 -- In Ex Machina last week ('AI use of original work: A reverse Robin Hood proposal'), I argued that the working paper issued by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) on copyright and artificial intelligence (AI) falls short of its objective because the mandatory blanket licensing regime it proposes transfers wealth away from the very creators it was supposed to protect.

But as bad as this suggestion is, it is not the most egregious conceptual shortcoming of the report. Far more disconcerting are the assumptions it makes about how AI systems are trained and its suggestion that this process infringes the Copyright Act of 1957.

The verb 'copy' lies at the heart of many operational activitie...