(Kennedy Felton)
The showdown between music publishers and the technology industry takes a surprising turn.
It all started in 2023, when publishers including Universal Music Group and Concord Music Group sued Anthropic, alleging copyright infringement.
Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that specializes in building systems like the chatbot Claude. The company was founded by two brothers who are former OpenAI executives.
Music publishers told a Tennessee federal court in February 2024 that “Claude” was trained using questions such as “What are the lyrics to Don McLean’s American Pie?” Ta. They also accused Anthropic of copyrighting the lyrics of more than 500 songs by artists such as Beyoncé and the Beach Boys.
But on Thursday, a U.S. district judge approved an agreement between the two companies that requires Anthropic to maintain existing guardrails. These safeguards prevent the AI from generating copyrighted material owned by the publisher or creating new lyrics based on that material. However, if the guardrails fail to prevent a breach, Publisher may notify Anthropic at any time.
The lawsuit echoes a story we featured in December in which companies like Anthropic and Apple were accused of using thousands of movies and TV episodes to train their AI models.
The controversy prompted the Writers Guild of America to write a letter to major Hollywood studios to combat AI plagiarism.
The battle between AI and copyright law is far from over, and this agreement is just the latest round in an ongoing battle.
