Anthropic, the developer of the AI chatbot Claude, has reached an agreement with three major music publishers to settle part of a copyright infringement lawsuit related to the alleged use of protected song lyrics.
Image source: Anthropic
U.S. District Judge Eumi Lee approved an agreement between the parties Thursday that requires Anthropic to comply with existing restrictions when training future AI models. These restrictions prevent the Claude chatbot from providing users with lyrics from songs owned by music publishers or creating new lyrics based on copyrighted material. The agreement also defines the procedure for intervention by music publishers in cases of suspected copyright infringement by Anthropic.
In October 2023, several music publishers, including Universal Music Group, ABKCO, Concord Music Group and Greg Nelson Music, filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in Tennessee federal court, accusing the company of copyright infringement. According to the plaintiffs, Anthropic allegedly trained its AI models on the lyrics of at least 500 protected songs. The lawsuit alleges that when Claude was asked for lyrics to songs such as Beyonce’s Halo, Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk and Maroon 5’s Moves Like Jagger, the chatbot provided responses “containing all or a significant portion of those lyrics.”
Music publishers highlighted that there are platforms such as Genius that legally distribute song lyrics online and pay licensing fees for doing so, unlike Anthropic. The lawsuit also alleges that the company “intentionally removed or altered copyright management information” for songs whose lyrics were used to train its AI models.
Claude “is not intended to be used for copyright infringement purposes, and we have numerous tools in place to prevent such infringement,” Anthropic said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “Our decision to enter into this agreement is consistent with these priorities.”
It should be noted that the settlement addresses only part of the claim. The court is expected to rule in the coming months on a preliminary injunction against training the company’s AI models on song lyrics owned by music publishers.