Universal Music Group (UMG), Concord Publishing and ABKCO Music & Records have presented a lawsuit against artificial intelligence (ai) startup Anthropic over allegations that the latter infringed copyright when training its ai chatbot Claude.
The lawsuit was filed on October 18 and claims that Anthropic “illegally” copied and disseminated “large quantities of copyrighted works, including the lyrics of countless musical compositions” that are owned or controlled by the publishers.
He called Anthropic’s use of the works “widespread and systematic infringement” and said the defendant cannot reproduce, distribute and display copyrighted works to build a business without proper rights.
“This fundamental rule of copyright law dates back to the Statute of Anne of 1710, and has been applied again and again to numerous infringing technological advances in the centuries since. That principle doesn’t go away simply because a company emblazons its violation with the words “ai.”
The lawsuit claims that Claude can generate identical or nearly identical copies of songs such as “What a Wonderful World,” “Gimme Shelter,” “American Pie,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Every Breath You Take” and at least 500 others. .
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In this case, the editors provided examples of how Claude was able to offer an almost word-for-word replica of the UMG song “I will survive” by Gloria Gaynor.
The plaintiffs have asked the court to order an end to the alleged infringement, along with monetary damages.
This case joins the many emerging against leading ai developers for copyright infringement.
OpenAI, the developer of the ai chatbot ChatGPT, has been sued for similar reasons by the Author’s Guild. Meta is currently facing a lawsuit from author Sarah Silverman and others over copyright issues. Google is involved in a lawsuit related to its policy of data mining for artificial intelligence training purposes.
When it comes to music industry involvement, UMG has been vigilant in protecting its catalog and its artists’ rights from ai-related copyright violations. On October 18, it signed a strategic partnership with BandLab Technologies focusing on the ethical use of ai to protect the rights of artists and songwriters.
Over the summer, UMG and Google were reportedly in talks to create a tool that would allow ai tracks to be created using artists’ images legally.
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