A lawsuit against artificial intelligence startup Anthropic was filed on Wednesday in federal court in Tennessee by music publishers Universal Music (UMG.AS), ABKCO, and Concord Publishing. They claimed that Anthropic had used “innumerable” copyrighted song lyrics to train its chatbot Claude.
Anthropic is accused of violating the publishers’ rights by using lyrics from at least 500 songs, including Beyonce’s “Halo,” Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk,” the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows,” and the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” among others.
Anthropic’s representatives did not immediately answer an inquiry for comments. Matt Oppenheim, the publisher’s attorney, declined to comment on the legal dispute but noted that it is “well established by copyright law that an entity cannot reproduce, distribute, and display someone else’s copyrighted works to build its own business” without the rightsholders’ consent.
Numerous copyright holders, like writers and visual artists, have filed lawsuits against tech companies like Meta Platforms (META.O) and Microsoft-backed OpenAI over using their creations to train generative AI systems.
The action filed by the music publishers against Anthropic, which has received funding from Google (GOOGL.O), Amazon (AMZN.O), and ex-cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, appears to be the first using song lyrics.
Anthropic is being sued for allegedly violating the publishers’ copyrights by using their lyrics as part of the “massive amounts of text” that are scraped from the internet to teach Claude to respond to human commands.
The publishers claim that Claude also unlawfully copies the lyrics on demand and in response to “a whole range of prompts that do not seek Publishers’ lyrics,” such as “requests to write a song about a specific topic, provide chord progressions for a given musical composition, or write poetry or short fiction in the style of a certain artist or songwriter.”
For instance, according to the complaint, Claude would offer pertinent lyrics from Don McLean’s “American Pie” when requested to compose a song commemorating rock pioneer Buddy Holly’s passing. The publishers requested monetary damages from the court and a directive to cease the alleged violation.
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