Music company BMG Rights Management has filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Anthropic, accusing it of using copyrighted lyrics to train the language models behind its chatbot Claude. The action was filed in a federal court in California, Reuters reports.
In the complaint filed on Tuesday, BMG claims that Anthropic copied and reproduced lyrics from songs by artists such as The Rolling Stones, Bruno Mars, Ariana Grande and other top musicians, thus infringing hundreds of copyrights, notes Anthropic, citing the international news agency.
The lawsuit adds to a growing series of lawsuits filed by authors, news agencies and media companies against technology firms that use copyrighted works to train AI systems.
What BMG invokes
BMG rival Universal Music Group and other music publishers filed a similar lawsuit against Anthropic in 2023, which is still ongoing. Anthropic settled last year, for 1.5 billion dollars, another lawsuit related to the training of artificial intelligence that was filed by a group of authors.
Anthropic representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
“Anthropic’s practice of training AI models on copyrighted works sourced from unauthorized torrent sites, among others, is in direct opposition to the standards required of any responsible participant in the AI communitye,” BMG said in a statement.
AI companies have argued that they are making fair use of copyrighted material by turning it into something new.
BMG, owned by German media group Bertelsmann, cited 493 examples of copyright that Anthropic allegedly infringed. Statutory damages for copyright infringement under US law can range from hundreds of dollars to $150,000 per work if the court finds that the infringement was willful
