PUBLISHERS ASK COURT TO SILENCE AI OPERATION

Universal Music Publishing Group, ABKCO and Concord have asked a Nashville court for a preliminary injunction against Anthropic to block its music-related AI operation.

Anthropic’s AI model, called "Claude," reproduces, distributes and displays near-exact copies of copyrighted works and uses them to create “mash-ups.” For example, when prompted to write a poem in the style of The Police, Claude combined the lyrics to “Roxanne,” “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” “Every Breath You Take” and “Message in a Bottle.”

Lawyers from Latham & Watkins and Neal & Harwell write that the program, violates copyrights when it responds to user prompts to create songs in the styles of various artists and note: “Anthropic unlawfully reproduces the works when it creates copies of the works in data sets; unlawfully reproduces the works again when it converts the works into tokens; and unlawfully reproduces, distributes and displays the works when Claude generates responses that are strikingly or substantially similar to the works."

“Though each infringing step in Anthropic’s process enables the next, each step is a distinct copyright violation," the motion continues. "Copying of the works in data sets and tokens infringes irrespective of the response Claude generates. And Claude’s output of the works infringes regardless of Claude’s internal process.”

UMPG and other parties state that Anthropic’s system violates publishers’ exclusive rights under the Copyright Act and that, as a result, publishers and songwriters lose control of their works and licensing. They contend, “An injunction serves the public by encouraging songwriters to create and share their works."

Said Oppenheim + Zebrak's Matthew J. Oppenheim, attorney for ABKCO, Concord and UMPG, when the case was first filed last month, "The unauthorized use of copyrighted material is illegal and, in the case of copyrighted music lyrics, harms songwriters and music publishers. It is well established by copyright law that an entity cannot reproduce, distribute or display someone else’s copyrighted works to build its own business unless it secures permission from rightsholders. Just like countless other technologies, AI companies must abide by the law.”