Universal Music Group, Concord, ABKCO, and other music publishers sued Anthropic in federal court in Tennessee, alleging systematic and widespread infringement of copyrighted song lyrics by Claude. The complaint pointed out that asking Claude for the lyrics to Katy Perry's "Roar" produced an almost identical copy. Roughly 500 songs were at issue, with the publishers seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work. It was one of the early copyright suits over generative AI, and it put the question of models reproducing their training data before a court.
18October 2023
PolicyConfirmed
Music publishers sue Anthropic over song lyrics
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Tags
- copyright
- lawsuit
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Later developments
2 January 2025 · Development
Anthropic and the publishers reached a partial deal under which Anthropic agreed to maintain and apply guardrails against reproducing lyrics. The underlying case continued.