Axios
This week’s music industry lawsuit against Anthropic adds yet another challenge to how AI firms train their large language models and offers a fresh reminder that generative AI remains a legal minefield.
Why it matters: The decisions courts reach in cases like this will lay the groundwork for decades of law governing AI.
Driving the news: Universal Music Group and other major record labels sued Anthropic on Wednesday for using its AI tool to distribute copyrighted lyrics without a licensing deal. Anthropic did not respond immediately to our request for comment.
The complaint focuses on OpenAI rival Anthropic’s Claude 2, a chatbot that was released in beta in July.
Last month Amazon announced a $4 billion investment in Anthropic, joining Google’s $300 million stake.
Conflict over LLM inputs and outputs has been brewing for a while and this lawsuit mirrors similar efforts from writers and actors suing AI companies over use of their work.
There are issues with both the way the AI engines are trained as well as the fact that, in some cases, they output content that reproduces part or all of a copyrighted work, Jason Peterson told Axios.
Peterson is the CEO of GoDigital Media Group, a media and technology company focused on intellectual property rights management and claims to be one of the largest independent music copyright holders in the world.
“This copying to storage for use in AI training is a likely clear-cut case of infringement, and the courts will put a stop to it,” Peterson added in an email.
Zoom in: The record label claims against Anthropic, while similar to those made by writers and actors, could be easier to prove.
“These claims are stronger,” Katie Gardner, partner at the law firm Gunderson Dettmer, told Axios. “Plaintiffs have identified output that is substantially similar (and in some cases identical) to the copyrighted input, and there is already a robust market for licensing music lyric data,” Gardner said in an email.
