India, June 21 -- Who owns the data that fuels artificial intelligence (AI)? That was the central - and contentious - question debated by representatives from big tech firms and the content industry during a two-day stakeholder consultation organised by the ministry of commerce and industry's department for promotion of industry and internal trade (DPIIT).

The meetings were chaired by DPIIT additional secretary Himani Pande on June 19 and 20. At the centre of the discussion was whether tech companies should be allowed to freely mine the internet, which includes copyrighted books, articles, music, images, and videos, to train their AI models.

The content industry raised concerns over their copyrighted data being used to train AI models w...