Universal Music Sues AI Startup Anthropic Over Copyright Infringement

Universal Music Group NV UMGNF, along with Concord and ABKCO have initiated a copyright infringement lawsuit against Anthropic, an AI startup.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, accuses the company of scraping their songs without permission and using them to generate near-identical copies of lyrics via their AI model, Claude.

See Also: How Artificial Intelligence Is Shaping The Future Of Music Streaming: Meet TREBEL AI

The music companies argue that Anthropic has never attempted to obtain licenses for their copyrighted content, emphasizing that internet availability doesn't make such material free for use.

"In the process of building and operating AI models, Anthropic unlawfully copies and disseminates vast amounts of copyrighted works," the lawsuit says.

"Just like the developers of other technologies that have come before, from the printing press to the copy machine to the web-crawler, AI companies must follow the law," the suit adds.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comment.

The AI startup, founded by ex-OpenAI researchers and backed by Amazon.com Inc AMZN and Alphabet Inc's GOOGL Google, has faced allegations beyond lyrics scraping.

The music companies claim that Claude also responds to prompts for writing in the style of popular musicians with unlicensed lyrics: "When we asked the AI model to write a piece of short fiction in the style of Louis Armstrong, it uses the lyrics for ‘What a Wonderful World’."

Universal has been taking steps to address AI use in the music industry responsibly, announcing partnerships with BandLab and Google for ethical AI applications, intending to license artists' voices and melodies, according to the Financial Times.

"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," the music groups said in Wednesday’s lawsuit.

The publishers are seeking $150,000 in statutory damages per work allegedly infringed, with a total of 500 works listed in an accompanying document.

Should Anthropic be found liable, the minimum amount it could potentially face in damages is $75 million. Additionally, an extra $25 million in statutory damages per violation may be determined during the trial.

The case is further spotlighted by Amazon's recent $4 billion investment in Anthropic, which boasts an estimated value of $5 billion.

Read Next: Meta's New AI Tool Transforms Text Into Music: 'We Can't Wait To See What People Create With Audiocraft'

Image credits: NMK-Studio on Shutterstock.