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While the case is proceeding, Anthropic’s Claude will no longer provide lyrics to songs owned by the music publishers or new lyrics based on copyrighted material.
By Winston Cho
A trio of major music publishers suing Anthropic over the use of lyrics to train its AI system have reached a deal with the Amazon-backed company to resolve some parts of a pending preliminary injunction.
U.S. District Judge Eumi Lee on Thursday signed off on an agreement between the two sides mandating Anthropic to maintain existing guardrails that prevent its Claude AI chatbot from providing lyrics to songs owned by the publishers or create new song lyrics based on the copyrighted material.
In a statement, Anthropic said Claude “isn’t designed to be used for copyright infringement, and we have numerous processes in place designed to prevent such infringement.” It added, “Our decision to enter into this stipulation is consistent with those priorities. We continue to look forward to showing that, consistent with existing copyright law, using potentially copyrighted material in the training of generative AI models is a quintessential fair use.”
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Universal Music Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO, among other publishers, sued Anthropic in Tennessee federal court in 2023, accusing it of copyright infringement for training its AI system on lyrics from at least 500 songs from artists such as Katy Perry, the Rolling Stones and Beyoncé. One example: When asked the lyrics to Perry’s “Roar,” which is owned by Concord, Claude provided an near-identical copy of the words in the song, according to the complaint.
At the heart of the lawsuit were allegations that there’s already an existing market that’s being undercut by Anthropic pilfering lyrics without consent or payment. The publishers pointed to music lyric aggregators and websites that have licensed their works.
The lawsuit marked the first legal action taken by a music publisher against an AI firm over the incorporation of lyrics in a large language model.
Under the agreement, Anthropic will apply already-implemented guardrails in the training of new AI systems. The deal also provides an avenue for music publishers to intervene if the guardrails aren’t working as intended.
“Publishers may notify Anthropic in writing that its Guardrails are not effectively preventing output that reproduces, distributes, or displays, in whole or in part, the lyrics to compositions owned or controlled by Publishers, or creates derivative works based on those compositions,” the filing states. “Anthropic will respond to Publishers expeditiously and undertake an investigation into those allegations, with which Publishers will cooperate in good faith.”
Anthropic has maintained in court filings that existing guardrails make it unlikely that any future user could prompt Claude to produce any material portion of the works-in-suit. They consist of a “range of technical and other measures — at all levels in the development lifecycle — that aim to prevent users from simply prompting Claude to regurgitate training data,” said a company spokesperson.
The court is expected to issue a ruling in the coming months on whether to issue preliminary injunction that would bar Anthropic from training future models on lyrics owned by the publishers.
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