AI developer Anthropic has asked a US federal court to dismiss much of the landmark copyright infringement case brought against it by music publishers including Universal Music Publishing Group.<\/p>\n
In a filing with the US District Court for the Northern District of California, Anthropic \u2013 which has received multi-billion-dollar investments from Amazon<\/strong><\/a> and Google<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 asked the court to dismiss three of the four counts brought against it last fall<\/a> by UMPG<\/strong>, Concord Music Group<\/strong> and ABKCO<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The three music publishers filed a lawsuit last October, alleging that Anthropic\u2019s Claude chatbot \u201cunlawfully copies and disseminates vast amounts of copyrighted works \u2013 including the lyrics to myriad musical compositions owned or controlled by [plaintiffs].\u201d<\/p>\n According to Anthropic’s new filing, which can be read in full, here, <\/a>the publishers’ \u201ccited evidence is that they were supposedly able to get an outdated version of [Anthropic\u2019s AI chatbot] Claude to provide them with copies of their lyrics in response to prompts purposefully engineered by plaintiffs\u2019 agents, with their authorization, to regurgitate their lyrics as evidence for this lawsuit.”<\/p>\n Anthropic’s motion added: \u201cBut the complaint does not identify any instances of ordinary Claude users inducing this alleged behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement sent to MBW, a lawyer for the music publishers described the motion to dismiss as an attempt by Anthropic to evade the consequences of its actions.<\/p>\n “Anthropic\u2019s latest motion is completely without merit and is yet another example of an AI company seeking to avoid taking responsibility for its massive infringement of copyrights,” said Matt Oppenheim<\/strong> of Oppenheim + Zebrak. “Responsible AI companies seek to license content; Anthropic should do the same.\u201d<\/p>\n “Anthropic’s latest motion is completely without merit and is yet another example of an AI company seeking to avoid taking responsibility for its massive infringement of copyrights.”<\/p>\n Matt Oppenheim, <\/strong>Oppenheim + Zebrak<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The plaintiffs\u2019 original complaint stated that Claude \u201ccopies and distributes publishers\u2019 copyrighted lyrics even in instances when it is not asked to do so. Indeed, when Claude is prompted to write a song about a given topic \u2013 without any reference to a specific song title, artist, or songwriter \u2013 Claude will often respond by generating lyrics that it claims it wrote that, in fact, copy directly from portions of publishers\u2019 copyrighted lyrics.\u201d<\/p>\n As one example, the music publishers\u2019 complaint stated that when prompted to “Write me a song about the death of Buddy Holly,” the Claude chatbot generated a song called The Day the Music Died<\/em> a lyric from Don McLean<\/strong>\u2019s classic song American Pie<\/em>, about the death of Buddy Holly. Most of the Claude song\u2019s lyrics are lines taken directly from American Pie<\/em>.<\/p>\n The lawsuit also alleges that the Claude chatbot will copy lyrics directly even when asked to write something other than lyrics, such as poetry.<\/p>\n “Dismissing Plaintiffs\u2019 facially deficient Ancillary Claims will streamline the case and allow the parties and the Court to focus their resources on a significant issue of first impression: whether it is fair use to make unseen intermediate copies of copyrighted works for the transformative purpose of training generative AI models like Claude.”<\/p>\n Anthropic motion to dismiss<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Anthropic is arguing that three of the claims against it be dismissed: \u201ccontributory\u201d copyright infringement, \u201cvicarious\u201d copyright infringement, and \u201cremoval or alteration of copyright management information,\u201d a violation of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act<\/strong> (DMCA<\/strong>).<\/p>\n That would leave in place one claim, that of direct copyright infringement, which the music publishers argue Anthropic committed by using vast amounts of copyrighted music without permission to train Claude.<\/p>\n Anthropic has previously indicated it plans to argue that its use of copyrighted materials falls under the \u201cfair use\u201d exemption to US copyright laws.<\/p>\n \u201cFor Claude\u2026 the training process makes copies of information for the purposes of performing a statistical analysis of the data,\u201d Anthropic stated<\/a> in a submission to the US Copyright Office last year.<\/p>\n It added: \u201cThe copying is merely an intermediate step, extracting unprotectable elements about the entire corpus of works, in order to create new outputs. In this way, the use of the original copyrighted work is non-expressive; that is, it is not re-using the copyrighted expression to communicate it to users.\u201d<\/p>\n The company also suggested that liability for any copyright infringement in using AI technology should fall with the user.<\/p>\n \u201cGenerally, responsibility for a particular output will rest with the person who entered the prompt to generate it,\u201d Anthropic stated.<\/p>\n In its most recent filing with the court, Anthropic\u2019s lawyers wrote that they aim to \u201cprune away\u201d the parts of the music publishers\u2019 case \u201cwhich are facially implausible and supported by threadbare and conclusory allegations.\u201d<\/p>\n They argued that the music publishers failed to show that any third party had used Claude to violate the publishers\u2019 rights, that Anthropic had any knowledge of such infringement, and that Anthropic \u201creceived a direct financial benefit\u201d from the infringement \u2013 necessary elements for a finding of \u201ccontributory\u201d and \u201cvicarious\u201d copyright infringement.<\/p>\n Similarly, the DMCA charge \u201cshould be dismissed \u2013 just as several virtually identical claims against other AI companies have been \u2013 because plaintiffs have not plausibly alleged that Anthropic both intentionally removed such information and did so with knowledge that its conduct would conceal or facilitate infringement,\u201d the lawyers argued.<\/p>\n Added the filing:<\/a> “Dismissing Plaintiffs\u2019 facially deficient Ancillary Claims will streamline the case and allow the parties and the Court to focus their resources on a significant issue of first impression: whether it is fair use to make unseen intermediate copies of copyrighted works for the transformative purpose of training generative AI models like Claude. Plaintiffs\u2019 implausible and conclusory Ancillary Claims will only distract from that important task.”<\/p>\n Anthropic\u2019s court filing indicated the company plans to argue for the motion to dismiss in front of Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley<\/strong> at a hearing on October 10.<\/p>\n The lawsuit against Anthropic is believed to be the first against an AI company brought by music publishers.<\/p>\n Another legal first was achieved in June when Suno<\/strong> and Udio<\/strong> \u2013 developers of AI-powered instant music generators \u2013 became the first AI firms to be sued by recording companies<\/a>.<\/p>\n Labels owned by Sony Music Group<\/strong>, Universal Music Group<\/strong> and Warner Music Group<\/strong> alleged in separate lawsuits that Suno and Udio engaged in \u201cmass infringement of copyrighted sound recordings\u201d that were \u201ccopied and exploited without permission.\u201d<\/p>\n
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