Anthropic reaches deal with music publishers over lyric dispute

Anthropic has reached an agreement to settle parts of a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against model creator Claude AI for distributing copyrighted song lyrics. The agreement was signed off by US District Judge Eumi Lee on Thursday, requiring Anthropic to apply existing guardrails in the training of future AI models and to establish a procedure for the music publisher to intervene when copyright infringement is suspected .

In October 2023, several music publishers including Universal Music Group, ABKCO, Concord Music Group, and Greg Nelson Music filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Anthropic to allegedly train its AI system on lyrics from at least 500 protected songs. According to the complaintwhen Claude was asked for lyrics to songs like Beyoncé’s “Halo,” Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk” and Maroon 5’s “Moves like Jagger,” the chatbot gave answers “that contain all or a significant portion of those lyrics”.

While music publishers acknowledged that platforms like Genius already distribute lyrics online, they noted that those sites pay a license fee to use protected works. Anthropic “intentionally removed or altered copyright management information” from the affected songs while ingesting data found on those sites to train its AI models, according to the lawsuit filing.

Under the agreement signed by Anthropic on Thursday, the AI ​​company says it will maintain the guardrails it has already implemented that aim to prevent its AI models from infringing copyrighted content. Anthropic will also apply its existing guardrails to any future AI systems it develops. Music publishers and Anthropic work together in “good faith” to resolve any cases where guardrails are deemed ineffective, with the court ready to resolve any disputes.

Claude “is not intended to be used for copyright infringement, and we have numerous processes in place designed to prevent such infringement,” Anthropic said. in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “Our decision to enter into this stipulation is consistent with these priorities. We continue to expect to demonstrate that, consistent with existing copyright law, the use of potentially copyrighted material in the training of generative AI models is a quintessentially fair use.

The music publishers behind the original complaint sought a preliminary injunction to prevent Anthropic from training future models on their protected song lyrics, with the court expected to issue a decision in the coming months.