AI Company Anthropic Faces Lawsuit Over Copyright Infringement of Song Lyrics
A group of publishers, including Universal Music Group Publishing, has filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, the AI company that recently received a $4 billion investment from Amazon. The publishers accuse Anthropic of engaging in “systematic and widespread infringement” of copyrighted song lyrics.
The lawsuit was filed in Nashville Universal Music Group Publishing, Concord Music Group, and ABKCO. Universal Music Group is the world’s largest music company. The news was first reported industry outlet Music Business Worldwide.
Anthropic, founded in 2021 former employees of OpenAI, describes itself as an “AI safety and research company.” It has quickly become one of the fastest-growing AI companies, raising $750 million before Amazon’s investment last month.
According to the lawsuit, the publishers are taking legal action because Anthropic unlawfully copies and disseminates copyrighted works, including lyrics to various musical compositions. The publishers claim that Anthropic violates copyright principles on a systematic and widespread basis.
The publishers allege that Anthropic’s AI chatbots, such as Claude, generate responses containing copyrighted lyrics in breach of copyright. For example, when asked for the lyrics to Katy Perry’s “Roar,” Claude provides a near-identical copy of the song’s lyrics, violating Concord’s copyright.
The lawsuit accuses Anthropic of infringing on copyrighted material even without specific requests to do so. The publishers are seeking a jury trial and damages of at least $75 million, with the possibility of a higher amount.
Matthew J. Oppenheim, representing the publishers, stated, “Just as Anthropic does not want its code taken without authorization, music publishers and copyright owners do not want their works exploited without permission.”
Amazon’s investment in Anthropic gave the tech giant a minority stake in the company. Anthropic will utilize Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud and Trainium, a chip developed Amazon to compete with Nvidia’s processors and support AI model training.
As of now, Anthropic has not provided a comment on the lawsuit.