Universal Music Group (UMG) is suing an artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic, alleging that it used UMG songs to train its models without authorization. Anthropic is a company that works on general AI model known as Claude. The lawsuit accuses Anthropic of violating UMG’s copyrights by using its songs as input for its AI models.
UMG: Anthropic Used Copyrighted Songs to Train AI Models
The lawsuit claims that Anthropic used UMG’s songs as raw material for creating new music. Anthropic’s website says that its AI models can generate original music in various genres and styles, based on user preferences. Users can also upload their own audio files and have the AI models remix them or add new elements. The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic’s service is based on UMG’s songs, which are protected by law.
“In the process of building and operating AI models, Anthropic unlawfully copies and disseminates vast amounts of copyrighted works,” lawyers for the music companies wrote. “Publishers embrace innovation and recognize the great promise of AI when used ethically and responsibly. But Anthropic violates these principles on a systematic and widespread basis.”
UMG is seeking damages and an injunction to stop Anthropic from using its songs. UMG says that Anthropic’s use of its songs harms its reputation and deprives it of revenue. UMG also says that Anthropic’s service competes with its own artists and labels, who create original music using their talent and creativity. UMG argues that Anthropic’s service is unfair and illegal, and that it should respect the rights of music creators.
new: Universal Music has sued AI start-up Anthropic for copyright infringement.
Anthropic's Claude chatbot is churning out song lyrics without permission "on a systematic and widespread basis", per filing.
story TK pic.twitter.com/wd1vfKTw3j— Anna Nicolaou (@annaknicolaou) October 18, 2023
Last month, Anthropic updated its entry-level large language model, known as Claude Instant, to version 1.2. Claude Instant 1.2 is a powerful model that can do many things like chatting, analyzing texts, summarizing documents, and understanding what they mean. It can take in up to 100,000 tokens of input, which is like hundreds of pages of content. It can also produce texts of up to a few thousand tokens in one shot, such as notes, letters, stories, and more. Earlier this month, Amazon made a $4 billion investment in Anthropic.
AI Models Training and Growing Concerns
AI models tap into online data to train and how companies access and use this data has become an area of controversy. Content creators have concerns that companies like OpenAI are accessing their works without permission. As a result, there have been several lawsuits against AI companies, notably OpenAI.
A group of writers, including major figures like Michael Chabon and David Henry Hwang, have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI. They claim that the company unlawfully accesses their copyrighted works to train its AI model, ChatGPT. Chabon and the group have also brought a similar lawsuit against Meta Inc. for the same reasons.
Earlier in the year, Sarah Silverman, Christopher Golden, and Richard Kadrey accused both OpenAI and Meta of copyright infringement. They claim technology companies obtained their books from illegal sources, such as websites that offer free downloads of pirated books.
In July, a group of leading news publishers also considered suing AI companies over copyright infringement. The publishers allege that the AI firms are infringing on their intellectual property rights and undermining their business model by scraping, summarizing, or rewriting their articles and distributing them on various platforms, such as websites, apps, or social media.
Last Updated on November 8, 2024 10:30 am CET
