Universal, Concord and ABKCO ask court for injunction to stop Anthropic’s AI from using their song lyrics

Music publishers ABKCO, Concord and Universal Music Publishing Group have requested a courtroom in Nashville to cease synthetic intelligence firm Anthropic from utilizing their lyrics by way of its AI chatbot Claude.

Final month, the three publishers sued the multi-billion-dollar-backed AI firm for the alleged “systematic and widespread infringement of their copyrighted tune lyrics”.

In a movement filed late on Thursday (November 16), the businesses requested the courtroom for a preliminary injunction to forestall Anthropic’s AI from utilizing their works whereas the case proceeds.

UMPG et al’s lawsuit final month, which you’ll read in full here, claimed that Anthropic infringes their copyrights by “scraping and ingesting huge quantities of textual content from the web and probably different sources, after which utilizing that huge corpus to coach its AI fashions and generate output based mostly on this copied textual content”.

The lawsuit seeks probably tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in damages from Anthropic and the result of the case may set a big precedent for AI firms’ use of copyrighted lyrics on their platforms.

The accompanying Exhibit A doc lists 500 songs which have allegedly been infringed by Anthropic.

In Thursday’s movement, obtained by MBW, and which you’ll see here, the businesses declare that Anthropic is “engaged in blatant and widespread copyright infringement”.

“Anthropic violates Publishers’ copyrights, unlawfully enriches itself on the expense of Publishers and their songwriters, and causes irreparable hurt.”

ABKCO, Harmony and UMPG 

The movement provides: “Anthropic has constructed its AI fashions and a multibillion-dollar enterprise by systematically copying and disseminating copyrighted textual content, together with the lyrics to musical compositions owned and managed by Publishers.

“In doing so, Anthropic violates Publishers’ copyrights, unlawfully enriches itself on the expense of Publishers and their songwriters, and causes irreparable hurt.

“Publishers search a preliminary injunction narrowly tailor-made to handle these ongoing harms and stem Anthropic’s infringement whereas this case proceeds.”

The publishers have additionally submitted a 38-page supporting Memorandum explaining the the reason why they imagine a preliminary injunction is warranted.

In that doc, additionally obtained by MBW, and which you’ll read in full here, the businesses state that they search two items of “interim aid”.

First, “Anthropic needs to be ordered to implement efficient guardrails to forestall output that reproduces, distributes, and shows” the businesses’ works.

Second, Anthropic needs to be prohibited from utilizing “present unauthorized copies or creating new unauthorized copies” of the publishers’ lyrics to coach new AI fashions.

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The supporting Memorandum additionally supplies particulars of situations the place the Anthopic’s Claude chatbot “makes use of the works in methods their writers by no means supposed”.

In a single instance, the publishers say that Claude generated a mashup of Candle within the Wind and Child Bought Bacok “including unsolicited components from Goodbye Yellow Brick Highway by Elton John and Bernie Taupin”.

The publishers argue that “Claude doesn’t do that accidentally” and that “Anthropic has full management over the information it supplies Claude as enter and over what Claude is permitted to generate as output”.

Elsewhere within the memorandum, the publishers say that “when prompted for the lyrics to every of the five hundred compositions, Claude responded with verbatim or near-verbatim copies of the Works”. Claude additionally allegedly “copies the works even when not particularly prompted for lyrics”.

“The unauthorized use of copyrighted materials is against the law and, within the case of copyrighted music lyrics, harms songwriters and music publishers.”

Matthew J. Oppenheim (in an announcement issued in October)

“The unauthorized use of copyrighted materials is against the law and, within the case of copyrighted music lyrics, harms songwriters and music publishers,” reads an announcement issued final month by Matthew J. Oppenheim of Oppenheim + Zebrak, LLP, Lawyer for ABKCO, Harmony and UMPG.

“It’s properly established by copyright legislation that an entity can’t reproduce, distribute, and show another person’s copyrighted works to construct its personal enterprise until it secures permission from rightsholders. Similar to numerous different applied sciences, AI firms should abide by the legislation.”Music Enterprise Worldwide