OpenAI and Anthropic are facing controversy over alleged violations of web scraping rules. Universal Music Group, Concord, and ABKCO have initiated a copyright infringement lawsuit against Anthropic. The AI startup, founded by ex-OpenAI researchers and backed by Amazon and Google, is accused of scraping songs without permission and using them to generate near-identical copies of lyrics via their AI model, Claude.
The music companies argue that Anthropic has never attempted to obtain licenses for their copyrighted content, emphasizing that internet availability doesn’t make such material free for use. In the process of building and operating AI models, Anthropic unlawfully copies and disseminates vast amounts of copyrighted works, the lawsuit says. Just like the developers of other technologies that have come before, from the printing press to the copy machine to the web-crawler, AI companies must follow the law, the suit adds.
Anthropic did not immediately respond to the request for comment. The music companies claim that Claude also responds to prompts for writing in the style of popular musicians with unlicensed lyrics. When we asked the AI model to write a piece of short fiction in the style of Louis Armstrong, it uses the lyrics for ‘What a Wonderful World’.
The publishers are seeking $150,000 in statutory damages per work allegedly infringed, with a total of 500 works listed in an accompanying document. Should Anthropic be found liable, the minimum amount it could potentially face in damages is $75 million. Additionally, an extra $25 million in statutory damages per violation may be determined during the trial.
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