Ekhbary News Agency | 2024-05-15
Music publishers, including industry giants Sony, EMI, and Warner Chappell, have initiated legal action against Anthropic, the developer behind the Claude AI. The lawsuit, filed on Friday, alleges that Anthropic engaged in widespread copyright infringement, specifically pirating "thousands upon thousands" of musical compositions to train its artificial intelligence models. This legal challenge follows a substantial $1.5 billion settlement Anthropic reached with authors who accused the company of pirating over seven million books. For what it's worth, the publishers contend this prior settlement was insufficient to deter further infringing conduct by a company they claim has achieved a staggering valuation through such actions.
Allegations of Mass Piracy and AI Training
The complaint details Anthropic's alleged "brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale." Publishers assert that this illicit activity, which began in July 2021, involved Anthropic co-founder Benjamin Mann personally using BitTorrent to download millions of pirated books from Library Genesis (LibGen). Even after LibGen's shutdown, internal communications reportedly show Anthropic staff, including CEO Dario Amodei, accessing copies through "Z-Library" and the "Pirate Library Mirror," with one staffer exclaiming, "zlibrary my beloved." These messages, the publishers argue, reveal Anthropic's endorsement of piracy for acquiring training data.
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Impact on Songwriters and Future Implications
Songwriters, already facing increased competition from AI-generated works, are directly harmed by this alleged piracy. The lawsuit claims Anthropic's AI can reproduce song lyrics verbatim and generate new songs mimicking popular works, effectively substituting artists in the market. Publishers fear that without an injunction, Anthropic will continue violating music copyrights, potentially relying on pirated songbooks to fulfill prompts like altering Eminem lyrics into "Beyonce’s style." While Anthropic denies using torrented books for commercial Claude models, the publishers believe deeper investigation will reveal a connection between pirated works and the AI's training phases.
