A federal judge has approved a temporary settlement in a lawsuit alleging that artificial intelligence company Anthropic used copyrighted song lyrics without authorization or payment while training its system.
Music publishers, including Universal Music Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Anthropic in 2023. The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic Claude AI The chatbot was trained and provides query results for lyrics from at least 500 songs by major artists, including Beyoncé and Katy Perry, without Anthropic obtaining permission or compensating rights holders.
On Thursday, US District Judge Eumi Lee signed off agreement between the publishers and Anthropic, which requires the AI company to maintain its current copyright protections — meaning it does not provide lyrics to old or new song lyrics — during the litigation process.
The agreement says nothing prevents Anthropic from “expanding, improving, optimizing or changing the implementation of such safeguards, provided that such changes do not materially reduce the effectiveness of the safeguards.” It also allows publishers to notify Anthropic at any time if they believe the safeguards are insufficient, at which point the company must address their concerns.
A court is expected to decide in the coming months whether songs owned by music publishers can be used to train artificial intelligence systems.
The case highlights the tension between generative AI developers and copyright holders, and not just in the music industry. Publishers including the New York Times sued ChatGPT makers OpenAI and Microsoft, and the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones sued Perplexity, all with alleged copyright infringement. Other publishers, meanwhile, have entered into licensing agreements with AI companies, including OpenAI and Meta.
Anthropic, backed by Amazon, Google, Salesforce and others, was founded by former OpenAI researchers in 2021. Its system is trained on datasets that may include copyrighted material such as song lyrics, which has raised questions about fair use and proper licensing.
In a statement shared with CNET, the company emphasized its commitment to respecting copyright, including by entering into the current agreement.
“Claude is not designed to be used for copyright infringement, and we have numerous processes designed to prevent such infringement,” the spokesperson said. “We continue to look forward to demonstrating that, consistent with existing copyright law, using potentially protected material in training generative AI models is substantial fair use.”
Universal Music Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but the original lawsuit alleges that Anthropic “illegally copies and distributes vast quantities of copyrighted works.”
“Just like the developers of other technologies that came before it, from the printing press to the copier to the Web browser, AI companies must follow the law,” the lawsuit says.
Anthropic continues to face other legal challenges. Earlier this year, the company was named in a class-action copyright infringement lawsuit by authors who claim Anthropic “built a multibillion-dollar business by stealing hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books.”