A coalition of major music publishers, including Universal Music Group, Concord, and ABKCO, has reportedly urged a California federal judge to rule that U. S. copyright law offers no protection to artificial intelligence (AI) startup Anthropic for its use of song lyrics. According to a Reuters report, the publishers filed a motion in San Jose, asking the court to hold the Amazon and Google-backed company Anthropic liable for copying millions of copyrighted works to train its AI chatbot, Claude. The plaintiffs said in a statement that Anthropic has “committed copyright infringement on a massive scale” and that the evidence was “overwhelming. ” T
The filing moves a pivotal question to the forefront of the ongoing legal tension between the tech industry and creative sectors: whether the “fair use” doctrine covers the mass ingestion of copyrighted data for AI development.
The publishers argued that the lyrics generated by Anthropic’s AI model Claude are derivative works that directly compete with and dilute the existing market for their intellectual property. Furthermore, the plaintiffs alleged that the chatbot unlawfully reproduces their lyrics on demand without any licensing agreements in place.
Anthropic mum on lawsuit so far
While spokespeople for Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment to Reuters, the company has previously denied allegations of wrongdoing. This specific lawsuit, initiated in 2023, claims Anthropic infringed on copyrights for at least 500 songs, including hits by the Rolling Stones, Beyoncé, and the Beach Boys.
The legal landscape remains fractured, as different judges within the same district have offered conflicting views on the “transformative” nature of AI training. While Judge William Alsup recently sided with Anthropic in a separate case involving authors — calling the use of books for training “quintessentially transformative” — the music publishers contend their case is distinct. They argued on that the specific ability of Anthropic Claude to reproduce their lyrics verbatim distinguishes their claim from previous lawsuits filed by authors or news outlets.
The request asks U.S. District Judge Eumi Lee to bypass a full trial by ruling immediately that Anthropic infringed on these copyrights and rejecting any fair use defense. This move comes as tech giants like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta face similar legal challenges, though Anthropic previously made headlines by settling a class-action lawsuit with a group of authors for $1.5 billion last year.
