This lawsuit is the first of its kind against Anthropic, which has received financial backing from Google, Amazon, and former cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried. The publishers are seeking monetary damages and a court order to halt the alleged infringement. The case follows a trend of copyright owners, including authors and visual artists, suing tech companies like Meta Platforms and Microsoft-backed OpenAI over the use of their work to train generative-AI systems.
Key takeaways:
- Music publishers Universal Music, ABKCO and Concord Publishing have sued AI company Anthropic, accusing it of using copyrighted song lyrics to train its chatbot without permission.
- The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic has infringed on the publishers' rights by using lyrics from at least 500 songs, including hits from the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars, and Beyonce.
- This case appears to be the first of its kind involving song lyrics and the first against Anthropic, which has received financial backing from Google, Amazon, and former cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried.
- The publishers are seeking monetary damages and an order to stop the alleged infringement, claiming that Anthropic's AI chatbot, Claude, illegally reproduces the lyrics upon request and in response to various prompts.