According to Cointelegraph, Universal Music Group (UMG), Concord Publishing, and ABKCO Music & Records have filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence (AI) startup Anthropic, accusing the company of copyright infringement in training its AI chatbot Claude. The lawsuit, filed on October 18, alleges that Anthropic unlawfully copied and disseminated vast amounts of copyrighted works, including lyrics to numerous musical compositions owned or controlled by the publishers.
The plaintiffs argue that Anthropic's use of the works constitutes widespread and systematic infringement and that the defendant cannot reproduce, distribute, and display copyrighted works to build a business without proper rights. 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 more.
In one example, the publishers provided evidence of Claude delivering an almost word-for-word replication of UMG's 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 is one of many emerging against major AI developers on the grounds of copyright infringement. OpenAI, the developer of AI chatbot ChatGPT, has been sued for similar reasons by the Author's Guild. Meta is currently facing a lawsuit by author Sarah Silverman and others for copyright issues. Google is involved in a lawsuit regarding its data scraping policy for AI training purposes.
UMG has been vigilant about protecting its catalog and the rights of its artists from AI-related copyright violations. On October 18, it entered into a strategic partnership with BandLab Technologies focusing on ethical AI usage to protect artist and songwriter rights. Over the summer, UMG and Google were reportedly in talks to create a tool that would allow for the creation of AI tracks using artists' likenesses in a legal way.