Music Publishers Sue Anthropic Over Copyrighted Lyrics
Concord Music Group and other publishers are suing Anthropic for allegedly training its Claude AI on thousands of copyrighted song lyrics.
A group of music publishers, led by Concord Music Group, has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against AI firm Anthropic in a California federal court. The plaintiffs allege that Anthropic trained its Claude AI model using pirated copies of 20,517 music works sourced from torrent sites, including copyrighted lyrics.
Concord claims that Claude can generate verbatim copies of lyrics, such as those from the song American Pie, and provides copyrighted texts for free. The publishers argue this practice deprives them of essential licensing revenue. They are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per copyright violation and $25,000 for the removal of copyright notices, or the recovery of lost profits.
Anthropic defends its training methods under the Fair Use doctrine, asserting that the material was transformed. The company further argues it is not responsible for outputs driven by users, stating that when a system creates a copy only in response to a user command, the operator does not engage in volitional conduct.
