Anthropic Wins Early Round in Music Copyright Battle

AI company Anthropic has scored an early victory against music publishers in a major copyright lawsuit, Reuters reports. US District Judge Eumi Lee denied a preliminary injunction that would have blocked Anthropic from using lyrics owned by Universal Music Group (UMG), Concord, and ABKCO to train its AI-powered chatbot, Claude.

The publishers, including UMG, had sought to prevent Anthropic from using lyrics from at least 500 songs by artists such as Beyoncé, the Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys, arguing that this violated their copyrights. They claimed that Anthropic had used these lyrics without permission to train Claude to respond to human prompts.

However, Judge Lee ruled that the publishers' request was too broad and that they failed to demonstrate "irreparable harm" caused by Anthropic's actions.

"Publishers are essentially asking the Court to define the contours of a licensing market for AI training where the threshold question of fair use remains unsettled," Lee stated in her opinion.

Despite this setback, the publishers remain confident in their broader case against Anthropic. In a statement, they asserted that they are "very confident in our case against Anthropic more broadly."

Anthropic, for its part, expressed satisfaction with the court's decision. An Anthropic spokesperson described the publishers' request as "disruptive and amorphous."

This lawsuit is one of several ongoing cases challenging the use of copyrighted material in AI development. Tech companies, including OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta Platforms, have argued that their AI systems make "fair use" of copyrighted material under US copyright law, using it to learn and generate new, transformative content.

The question of fair use is likely to be central to these lawsuits, although Judge Lee's opinion did not specifically address this issue in her ruling. The publishers argued that Anthropic's use of their lyrics caused irreparable harm by diminishing their licensing market.

Blake Brittain, the Reuters reporter covering the case, notes that this legal battle is part of a broader trend of companies using copyrighted material to train AI models, raising concerns about the potential impact on creators' rights and the future of licensing in the AI era.