The publishers are claiming Anthropic allegedly used copyrighted lyrics in the training of its AI systems. in a lawsuit filed in US federal court.

Grounded in the broader backdrop of other creators, such as authors and artists, pursuing AI for using their material without permission, the lawsuit is part of the wider issue surrounding AI and copyright which has plagues creators, lawmakers, and AI companies since the drop of mainstream AI applications.  

Universal Music Group is the largest record company in the world, pulling in over £9 billion in profit last year alone. It represents some of the biggest names in the industry such as Taylor Swift, Drake, Elton John, Harry Styles and more.

The move by Universal along with other big names in the industry like Concord Music Group and ABKCO represents another turning point in the creative industry’s plight against AI, following the dramatic and lengthy WGA (Writers Guild of America) strikes earlier this year which called for regulations to govern the use of the technology.

According to the lawsuit, Anthropic’s large language model, Claude 2, is allegedly producing outputs that contain “all or significant portions of those lyrics,” when asked to provide lyrics to well known songs, which is seen as a violation of copyright law.

The plaintiffs also contend that the chatbot occasionally extracts copyrighted material even when not explicitly instructed to do so: for example, when asked to create songs in the style of specific artists. 

Just yesterday, Stanford University released a Foundation Model Transparency Index, scoring the top 10 AI companies out of 100 for the transparency of their programmes. Anthropic landed sixth overall with a score of 39%. Its data score, however, was a dismal 0%.

“Publishers embrace innovation and recognize the great promise of AI when used ethically and responsibly,” reads the lawsuit. “But Anthropic violates these principles on a systematic and widespread basis. Anthropic must abide by well-established copyright laws, just as countless other technology companies regularly do.”

The lawsuit emphasises that Anthropic “profits richly” from these works while alleging no compensation has been given to publishers, writers or other copyright owners. The legal action seeks a jury trial and damages of up to $150,000 for each infringed song, a figure that could potentially amount to tens of millions of dollars in total.

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Anthropic is not the only AI company under fire for potentially copyrighting material. Getty images sued Stability AI earlier this year for allegedly infringing on intellectual property rights. OpenAI, the creator of the popular chatbot ChatGPT, is also facing a lawsuit after noted authors such as Game of Thrones creator George RR Martin, who claims the vendor generated summaries of its work. 

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former employees of OpenAI, and has received significant backing from Google, and partnered with Amazon to advance its AI.

The company has yet to release official comment on the lawsuit.