Music Publishers Say They’re ‘Very Confident’ in Case Against Anthropic Despite Legal Setback

A federal court in California denied an injunction sought by music publishers in their copyright case against Anthropic on Tuesday. The injunction would’ve barred the AI company from using song lyrics to train the AI models that power its chatbot Claude. The music publishers first filed the suit in late 2023 and while this is a setback for the publishers, it’s just one battle in a much larger legal war between AI companies and copyright holders. Concord, ABKCO Music & Records, and Universal Music first filed suit against Anthropic in October 2023, alleging that Claude’s responses to questions would include things identical or nearly identical to song lyrics. As the copyright holders, the music publishers argue that such use of their songs aren’t considered fair use under U.S. copyright law. U.S. District Judge Eumi Lee wrote that although the publishers sought to clarify the scope of what they were asking for, their inclusion of 500 songs that were allegedly used by Anthropic wasn’t ... Read full article.