Indian Law Student Challenges Test Paper Labelled ‘AI-Generated’

A law student who recently failed his end-of-term examination has filed a petition against Haryana's OP Jindal Global University for accusing him of using AI to answer questions on the test.

Kaustubh Shakkarwar, an LLM student and practising lawyer, filed the lawsuit seeking to revoke the decision of the “unfair means committee”. Punjab and Haryana High Court judge Justice Jasgurpreet Singh Puri issued a notice to the university and listed the matter for November 14.

According to the university, Shakkarwar’s submission on ‘Law and Justice in the Globalizing World’ was AI-generated.

While asserting the authorship of his submission, Shakkarwar demanded the university furnish a specific rule prohibiting the use of AI. However, the university has failed to provide any document establishing this.

Who is the Author?

Last year, the US District Court for the District of Columbia bench delivered a ruling in the Thaler v. Perlmutter case, wherein the US Copyright Office (USCO) refused to grant copyright registration to an AI-generated artwork titled ‘A Recent Entrance to Paradise’. 

Stephen Thaler, the plaintiff, argued that the artwork was created autonomously by an AI system he had developed, which he called the ‘Creativity Machine’.

The court, however, supported the USCO’s decision to deny copyright registration for the AI-generated artwork, underscoring the long-standing principle that copyright law applies only to works created by humans. The court also suggested that even minimal human contribution might satisfy the low threshold required for copyright eligibility.

“Undoubtedly, we are approaching new frontiers in copyright as artists put AI in their toolbox to be used in the generation of new visual and other artistic works,” the court said in its verdict.

The court had also highlighted that the growing separation of human creativity from the actual production of the final work would raise difficult questions about how much human involvement is needed for someone to be considered the 'author' of an AI-generated work.