BMG Rights Management Files Lawsuit Against Anthropic for Copyright Infringement in AI Training
BMG Rights Management has filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, an artificial intelligence startup, in California federal court. The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic used copyrighted lyrics from popular songs by artists like the Rolling Stones, Bruno Mars, and Ariana Grande to train its Claude chatbot. This infringement of hundreds of copyrights has led to BMG taking legal action against Anthropic.
This legal battle is part of a larger trend where authors, news outlets, and copyright owners are suing tech companies for using their work to train large language models for chatbots. Universal Music Group and other music publishers have also filed a lawsuit against Anthropic in a related case that is still ongoing. Anthropic settled a similar lawsuit with authors for $1.5 billion last year.
Both BMG and Anthropic have not yet commented on the lawsuit. AI companies often argue that they are transforming copyrighted material into something new and therefore making fair use of it. However, BMG has identified 493 instances of copyright infringement by Anthropic, which could result in significant statutory damages under U.S. law if the court finds the infringement to be willful.
This lawsuit highlights the ongoing legal battles between copyright owners and tech companies over the use of copyrighted material in training AI models. The outcome of this case could have significant implications for the use of copyrighted content in AI development.