Several leading artificial intelligence companies are offering free premium subscriptions to users in India, raising questions about why these expensive services are being made available at no cost. Many users discovered that plans such as Perplexity Pro, Google AI Pro, and ChatGPT Go are being bundled for free with mobile plans or offered for a limited period, even though these services usually cost thousands of rupees a year.
India has become a priority market because it has one of the world’s largest internet user bases. The country is expected to cross nine hundred million internet users, driven by low cost mobile data, widespread smartphone usage and rapid digital growth. Telecom operators such as Airtel and Jio play a major role in distributing these AI services, as they can reach millions of customers instantly.
The larger reason behind these offers is linked to the value of data. Every major AI model needs vast amounts of high quality training data, much of which is collected from public internet sources. Companies use web crawlers and large datasets to train models such as GPT and Gemini. Some companies also use user interactions and posts on social media platforms to improve their systems. Critics say the lack of transparency around training data remains a major concern.
Global publications have filed lawsuits against several AI companies for using copyrighted content without permission. Recent cases include legal action against Perplexity for allegedly scraping news content. Other companies have also faced legal pressure, forcing them to sign agreements with publishers to use articles, images and other content for AI training. Many major international media organisations have now entered licensing deals with companies to regulate how their content is used.
As AI adoption expands, concerns about data privacy continue to grow. India does not yet have a specific law governing artificial intelligence. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act of 2023 provides general protections for personal data but does not address how AI models learn or store information. Unlike regions such as California or the European Union, there is no clear mechanism in India for users to request removal of their data from AI systems. Experts warn that even if such a system existed, making an AI model forget its training data would require retraining it entirely, which is extremely expensive.
AI companies see India as both a massive consumer base and an important source of training data. While free subscriptions attract users, the long term cost may lie in the use of personal data that feeds the next generation of AI systems.
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