Why ‘lawful access’ may not be required for AI training in India Arul George Scaria, law professor at National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, tells *The Indian Express* what the Delhi High Court’s AI copyright ruling means for LLM training, fair dealing and potential liability for AI outputs. https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-law/delhi-hc-llm-train... *The Delhi High Court has a pending suit regarding “shadow libraries” (like Sci-Hub) despite a preliminary observation that such libraries infringe on copyright. Since LLMs are often trained on these libraries, does this present a legal grey area in India?* In *Elsevier vs Alexandra Elbakyan*, I feel the court did not have the opportunity to hear the perspectives of the academic and research community. *ANI vs OpenAI* rightly clarifies that “lawful access” is not a general requirement under the fair dealing provision, or under most of the other exceptions to infringement listed under Indian copyright law. *So if you can prove as a user that your use comes under the fair dealing exception or any of the other exceptions wherein lawful access is not mandated, the source shouldn’t really matter.* Wherever “lawful access” is intended under our copyright statute, it is specifically mentioned..... Madhan (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1651-4180)