--- title: "Music Industry Sues Anthropic for Alleged Theft of Lyrics" description: "Universal Music Group and several other record labels have accused Anthropic of stealing their lyrics to train its chatbot Claude 2." date: "2023-10-20" modified: "2023-10-20" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/music-industry-sues-anthropic-lyrics" categories: - "Anthropic" - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "anthropic" - "generative ai" - "the digest" --- # Music Industry Sues Anthropic for Alleged Theft of Lyrics ![Universal Music Group and several other record labels have accused Anthropic of stealing their lyrics to train its chatbot Claude 2.]() *WINDSOR, ENGLAND - MAY 07: Katy Perry performs on stage during the Coronation Concert on May 07, 2023 in Windsor, England. The Windsor Castle Concert is part of the celebrations of the Coronation of Charles III and his wife, Camilla, as King and Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the other Commonwealth realms that took place at Westminster Abbey yesterday. High-profile performers will entertain members of the royal family and 20,000 guests including 10,000 members of the public. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images) \Image: Leon Neal/Getty Images\* ## Liner Quotes In the latest example of the entertainment industry pushing back against AI, Universal Music Group — one of the largest record labels in the world — as well as Concord Music Group and ABKCO have sued the Amazon-backed AI startup Anthropic. The [lawsuit](), filed in the Tennessee federal court on Wednesday, accuses Anthropic of illegally copying and distributing copyrighted lyrics that were used to train its chatbot Claude 2. When directly prompted, Claude 2 can spit out the lyrics to hundreds of songs in the publishers' catalog, ranging from artists like The Rolling Stones, to Beyoncé, to Katy Perry. "Anthropic builds its AI models by scraping and ingesting massive amounts of text from the internet and potentially other sources," the publishers wrote in the lawsuit, claiming that included "innumerable" amounts of their musical compositions. "This copyrighted material is not free for the taking simply because it can be found on the internet," they added. ## A Poor Poet Even when the Antrophic's chatbot isn't directly asked for an existing song's lyrics, the music publishers allege, Claude 2 will reproduce nearly identical lyrics when prompted to write a supposedly original poem or musical composition in a certain style. An example provided in the lawsuit: when Claude is asked to "write a short piece of fiction in the style of Louis Armstrong," the chatbot's output is almost word-for-word the lyrics to "What a Wonderful World." (More blatantly, Claude also ripped the title of its "piece of fiction" directly from Armstrong's iconic song.) The record labels draw a line between websites that share music lyrics and Anthropic's AI. Those lyrics aggregators, they point out, often receive licenses and are required to properly give credit. "But when Anthropic's AI models regurgitate publishers' lyrics, they are often unaccompanied by the corresponding song title, songwriter, or other critical copyright management information," they wrote. It seems Claude has a guilty conscience, too. According to the publishers, the chatbot will sometimes refuse to output anything using real song lyrics, telling users that that would violate "copyright restrictions." This demonstrates, the lawsuit alleges, that Anthropic is capable of programming guardrails into the AI. ## Ongoing Battle Among its peers, UMG has been notoriously hostile to AI-generated music. In April, it demanded that streamers [take down a song]() that used AI-cloned vocals of the rapper Aubrey "Drake" Graham and singer-songwriter Abel Makkonen "the Weeknd" Tesfaye. And yet, UMG has also dabbled in AI ventures of its own, such as [licensing its artists' melodies and voices]() for use in Google's AI Music generator. So the label seems to be fine with AI — so long as it gets paid. "Universal uses AI in its business and production operation," the publishers wrote. "Anthropic's copyright infringement is not innovation; in layman's terms, it's theft." *Is* it theft? The decisions of the courts will have to bear that out, in what could be a major precedent in the [ongoing copyright battle]() over generative AI. **More on AI:** *[Google Terrified of Lawsuit That Would "Take a Sledgehammer" to Generative AI]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()