AI company Anthropic is facing a lawsuit filed by music publishers Universal Music, ABKCO, and Concord Publishing for alleged copyright infringement of their songs. The lawsuit was filed in Tennessee federal court and appears to be the first against Anthropic regarding song lyrics, according to Reuters.
The publishers have accused Anthropic of using a large number of copyrighted song lyrics to train its chatbot Claude and including the lyrics in its prompted answers without obtaining permission. The lawsuit claims that this is a clear violation of established copyright laws. The publishers claim that Anthropic has unlawfully copied and disseminated a significant amount of copyrighted works, leading to systematic and widespread infringement.
The publishers allege that Anthropic used lyrics from over 500 songs to train its chatbot, including songs like “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys, “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones, “Halo” by Beyonce, and “Uptown Funk” by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars. They are seeking potentially tens of millions of dollars in damages from Anthropic and are asking for an order to stop the alleged infringement.
Anthropic’s alleged unlawful exploitation is detailed in the lawsuit. The company keeps the origins of the content used to train its AI a secret, providing only limited information. The publishers claim that Anthropic was aware it was duplicating copyrighted information without permission but refused to be transparent about the materials used to teach Claude. The lawsuit also cites instances where the company’s AI model responds with exact or nearly exact copies of the publishers’ copyrighted lyrics when prompted by users.
Additionally, Anthropic is accused of failing to indicate that it will take any actions to remove copyrighted content, despite “cleaning” the text it ingests to eliminate offensive language. The company’s AI model has also been claimed to be capable of creating lyrics for new songs using existing copyrighted songs, often resulting in inconsistent and damaging combinations.
The music publishers state that they view AI positively and acknowledge its potential when used ethically and responsibly. However, they believe Anthropic violates these principles by not abiding by copyright laws, like many other technology companies do. Due to Anthropic’s mass copying and ingestion of song lyrics, the publishers argue that Anthropic’s AI models generate identical or nearly identical copies of their copyrighted lyrics, which is a clear violation of their rights.
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