Music publisher sues Anthropic, Suno over copyright violation
What's the story
Independent music publisher Round Hill Music has filed a lawsuit against Anthropic and Suno in a California federal court. The lawsuit alleges that the two artificial intelligence (AI) companies misappropriated hundreds of songs that the publisher has rights to train their systems. The complaint specifically accuses Anthropic of using lyrics from at least 500 songs, including those by James Brown, The Kinks, and Goo Goo Dolls.
Case expansion
Round Hill may add more songs to these lawsuits
Round Hill has also accused Suno of using the same songs to train its AI music generation system.
The publisher has informed the court that it may add "10 thousand or more" compositions to these lawsuits in the future.
It is seeking damages that could "potentially approach or conceivably exceed $1 billion."
CEO remarks
We will take these cases to trial: Round Hill CEO
Round Hill CEO Josh Gruss has said, "We intend to take these cases to trial and to hold these companies accountable."
He added that they will not accept a resolution that leaves songwriters and artists without their fair share of compensation.
This lawsuit is among many others where copyright owners are taking tech giants like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta Platforms to court over training their AI systems.
Legal battles
Anthropic has settled a similar case in the past
Notably, Amazon-backed Anthropic was the first major AI company to settle a similar case, agreeing to pay $1.5 billion to a group of authors last year.
However, it is still facing separate lawsuits from Universal Music Group, BMG Rights Management, among others, for allegedly misusing thousands of their song lyrics for AI training.
Suno is also facing similar lawsuits from UMG and Sony Music over its AI training practices.