A group of major music publishers, including Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group, are taking tech giant Anthropic to court over allegations of "flagrant piracy". The lawsuit claims that the AI company, which is valued at $350 billion, has been secretly downloading more than 20,000 copyrighted songs, including sheet music, lyrics, and compositions, without permission.
According to the publishers, these stolen works were then used to train Anthropic's chatbot Claude, resulting in the creation of millions of dollars worth of content. The music industry giants have accused Anthropic of misleadingly claiming that it is an "AI safety and research" company, when in reality its business has been built on illicit copyright infringement.
The publishers are seeking damages of over $3 billion, making this one of the largest non-class action copyright cases in US history. This sum is staggering, especially considering that Anthropic's valuation is less than 1% of this amount.
This latest lawsuit is a follow-up to last year's Bartz v. Anthropic case, which resulted in an award of $1.5 billion to impacted writers after it was found that the company had illegally downloaded their published works for training purposes. The terms of that agreement dictated that the 500,000 authors involved would receive $3,000 per work.
However, unlike in the Bartz case, where Anthropic was allowed to train its models on copyrighted content as long as it didn't acquire the content via piracy, this new lawsuit suggests that the company may be liable for acquiring these works through illicit means. It's an odd distinction, given that Anthropic's entire business model appears to rely on snatching up copyrighted content.
The outcome of this latest lawsuit remains to be seen, but it has significant implications for the music industry and the role of AI companies in the creative process.
According to the publishers, these stolen works were then used to train Anthropic's chatbot Claude, resulting in the creation of millions of dollars worth of content. The music industry giants have accused Anthropic of misleadingly claiming that it is an "AI safety and research" company, when in reality its business has been built on illicit copyright infringement.
The publishers are seeking damages of over $3 billion, making this one of the largest non-class action copyright cases in US history. This sum is staggering, especially considering that Anthropic's valuation is less than 1% of this amount.
This latest lawsuit is a follow-up to last year's Bartz v. Anthropic case, which resulted in an award of $1.5 billion to impacted writers after it was found that the company had illegally downloaded their published works for training purposes. The terms of that agreement dictated that the 500,000 authors involved would receive $3,000 per work.
However, unlike in the Bartz case, where Anthropic was allowed to train its models on copyrighted content as long as it didn't acquire the content via piracy, this new lawsuit suggests that the company may be liable for acquiring these works through illicit means. It's an odd distinction, given that Anthropic's entire business model appears to rely on snatching up copyrighted content.
The outcome of this latest lawsuit remains to be seen, but it has significant implications for the music industry and the role of AI companies in the creative process.
... they're basically using others people's work (and that's a lot) without permission just to make their own stuff worth money 
. And it sounds like they're trying to hide behind some big tech company shield 
, which isn't fair to the artists and publishers who actually created all that music in the first place 
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... I mean, it's a lot to swallow considering anthropic is basically built on some shady stuff 
. Can't we just talk about this in a more constructive way? Like, can't we figure out ways for AI companies to use music without stealing from people 
?
anthropic is basically a copyright infringer and they're gettin away with MASSIVE $$$ 
and now they're being sued for allegedly doing it with "flagrant piracy" newsflash: music publishing companies have been raking in millions from artists while leaving them pennies on the table 
and now they're trying to take down an AI company that's actually helping the industry grow 
... er I mean, copyrighted songs. Like, isn't that what they're training their chatbots to do? But seriously, $3 billion is a pretty steep price tag for Anthropic to pay if it's just using those downloaded tunes to create more music. It's like they say, "you can't have your cake and train a chatbot too"... or something 
. It's like, how can you even train an AI with stolen content? That's just not right 
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! I think they should be allowed to use copyrighted content for training purposes if they're not directly pirating it. It's time to rethink our approach to copyright and innovation 
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And the fact that they used these songs to create millions of dollars worth of content, while claiming to be an "AI safety and research" company, is just shady 
. I'm not surprised that Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group are taking Anthropic to court for this flagrant piracy 
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The outcome of this case will likely have a huge impact on how AI companies operate in the creative space, so I'm keeping an eye on it 
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and now they're going after them for like, 3 billion dollars 
anthropic's whole business model seems super questionable from the getgo 
its just ai, right? and they think they can just claim its for safety research and then sue them for 3 billion dollars over it? thats wild.
if you ask me. maybe the music industry should just start paying people per song, problem solved 
. i guess this is a wake-up call for all the other startups thinking of jumping into the ai game 
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but at the same time i feel bad for those 500k authors who didn't get paid out properly last year 
hopefully this lawsuit will lead to more transparency around how anthropic uses copyrighted content 
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. And now we're seeing them get called out for it 
. The $1.5 billion award last year was a good start, but this new lawsuit takes it to the next level 
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. Will Anthropic's valuation take a hit? Will they have to change their business model on the fly 
? Whatever happens, one thing's for sure: artists and creators deserve protection for their work