Anthropic reaches agreement with music publishers over AI copyright dispute
What's the story
Amazon-backed artificial intelligence (AI) firm, Anthropic, has struck an interim deal with three top music publishers. The deal comes as part of an ongoing preliminary injunction in a 2023 lawsuit filed by Universal Music Group, Concord Music Group, and ABKCO. The publishers had accused Anthropic of copyright infringement for using song lyrics to train its AI system without permission or any payment.
Legal approval
US district judge approves interim agreement
US District Judge Eumi Lee has approved the interim agreement between Anthropic and the music publishers. According to the deal, Anthropic must maintain existing safeguards that prevent its AI chatbot Claude from using song lyrics owned by these publishers or generating new lyrics based on copyrighted material. This is a major development in the ongoing copyright dispute involving AI technology and song lyrics.
Company response
Anthropic's stance on copyright infringement allegations
Responding to the lawsuit, Anthropic said its AI chatbot Claude "isn't designed to be used for copyright infringement, and we have numerous processes in place designed to prevent such infringement." The company added that their decision to agree on this stipulation aligns with these priorities. They are eager to demonstrate that using potentially copyrighted material in training generative AI models is a quintessential fair use under existing copyright law.
Legal implications
Music publishers' concerns and the unique nature of the lawsuit
The music publishers are worried about an existing market being undercut by Anthropic's unauthorized use of lyrics. They emphasized lyric aggregators and websites that have legally licensed their works. Notably, this lawsuit is the first of its kind where a music publisher has sued an AI company for including song lyrics into a large language model (LLM), opening a new frontier in copyright disputes with AI.
Safeguard measures
Agreement allows music publishers to intervene
The agreement also lets music publishers intervene if they think Anthropic's safeguards aren't doing a good job at preventing copyright infringement. If that happens, publishers can inform Anthropic in writing. The company is then required to respond quickly and launch an investigation into these allegations, expecting full cooperation from the publishers.